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THE IMAGE OF GOD 

AND 

OTHER SERMONS 




The Image of God 

AND 


Other Sermons 


By 

EDWIN C. SWEETSER, D.D. 

Pastor Emeritus , Church of the Messiah 
Philadelphia , Pa. 



New York Chicago 

Fleming H. Revel 1 Company 

London and Edinburgh 


\ 


AND 



Copyright, 1923, by 

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 


S^ 


4 ) 


©Cl A711253 

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 




Foreword 

T HESE sermons are published with a hope that 
they will be helpful to at least some of their 
readers. They have been chosen with reference 
to certain questions which are of great importance to 
every one; and to such of their readers as listened to 
them when they were preached in the Universalist 
Church of the Messiah, in Philadelphia, they may call 
up pleasant recollections of a ministry of many years. 

E. C. S. 

Philadelphia, Pa. 


5 




Contents 


I. The Image of God . . . .9 

Matt. 22:20 


II. The Incarnation . . . .19 

John 1:14, 16 

III. The Miracles oe Jesus Christ . . 28 

John 10:24, 25 

IV. The Basis oe Our Beliee in Immor¬ 

tality . 40 

I Pet. 1:3, 4 [R. V.] 

V. Wiee Christ Return to This World? 50 

Matt. 16:24, 27, 28 

VI. The Triumphal Progress oe Christ . 61 
Mark 11:1-9 


VII. The Extermination oe Evil 
Matt. 15:13 

VIII. The Story oe Jonah . 

Jonah 3:1, 2 

IX. God's Elect: Who and Why? 
Rom. 8:33 

X. Thinking and Being . 

Prov. 23:6, 7; Phil. 4:8 

XI. Having and Being 
Matt. 19:21 

XII. The Sovereignty oe Truth . 
John 18:38 


. 70 
. 79 
. 89 
. 98 
. 106 
. 115 


7 


8 


CONTENTS 


XIII. Blessings in Disguise .... 124 

Job 42:12 

XIV. Ability and Responsibility . . 134 

Matt. 25:14, 15 

XV. Transformation by Contemplation . 142 
II Cor. 3:18 

XVI. The House of God . . . .150 

Gen. 28:17 

XVII. The Bow in the Cloud . . .158 

Gen. <7:12-15 

XVIII. Making a Virtue of Necessity . . 167 

Matt. 16:21 

XIX. An Antidote for Worrying . . 175 

Phil. 4:5-7 [R. V .] 

XX. The Inheritance of the Meek . . 184 

Matt. 5:5 

XXI. It Might Have Been .... 194 
Acts 26:32 

XXII. A Precious Secret .... 202 
Psa . 25:14 

XXIII. The Parable of the Empty House . 211 

Matt. 12:43-45 

XXIV. As a Fool Dieth. 220 

II Sam. 3:33 [/?. V.] 

XXV. Our Heavenly Home .... 229 
Bccl. 12:5 


I 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 

“ Whose is this image and superscription? ”— Matt. 22: 20. 

I N the picture gallery at Dresden there is a famous 
painting by Titian, representing the incident which 
occasioned this question. Entitled “ Christ and the 
Tribute Money,” it pictures Jesus face to face with one 
of the crafty conspirators who attempted to beguile 
Him into making some statement that would furnish 
them with a plausible accusation against Him. 

The man holds a piece of money at which Jesus is 
pointing, and his aquiline countenance has a wily ex¬ 
pression which betokens his character. His lips are 
compressed, his eyes are deep set, and from under his 
beetling brows he scans the face of the Saviour while 
awaiting His answer to the problem which he has set 
for Him, as to whether the Jews should pay tribute to 
Caesar. Jesus slightly inclines His head towards him, 
and meets his look with a counter look which seems to 
penetrate his soul—a look so clear, so unwavering, so 
profound, and so kindly that it altogether overmasters 
his expression of craftiness—as He quietly says to him, 
“ Whose is this image and superscription? ” 

The coin is a denarius, imprinted with an image of 
the Roman Emperor; and so the man truly answers, 
“ Caesar’s.” But, unconsciously, he is exhibiting to his 
questioner not only a piece of money but his own inner 
nature, his own soul, his own selfhood; and Jesus sees 
an image there as well as on the piece of money, an 

9 


10 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 


imprint and a superscription which signify something 
of the highest importance with reference to the man 
himself; and so He seizes the opportunity to teach him 
a great lesson, and through him to teach it to the world. 
“ Render,” He says, “unto Caesar the things that are 
Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” Im¬ 
printed on the piece of money He sees an image of the 
Roman Emperor. In the man who is holding it He 
sees an image of God. Hence the peculiar fitness of 
the question which He puts to him, and the importance 
of the answer with which He sends him away. 

Let us endeavour to grasp the significance of the 
great truth which the Saviour’s question and answer 
imply—the truth that every human being bears the 
image of God. 

That is one of the primary truths of the Bible. It 
appears in the very first chapter of Genesis, where we 
are told that, after God had made the animal world. He 
created man in His own image and commanded him to 
multiply and replenish the earth. Perhaps Jesus had 
that passage of Scripture in mind when He utilized the 
coin to enforce its significance. At all events, there it 
stands, and His language agrees with it. Man is made 
in God’s image. He was made so in the beginning, and 
by that fact he is differentiated, with a difference as 
wide as that between heaven and earth, from every 
other creature that inhabits this world. 

When God made man in His own image He created 
a new category, a new order of beings, distinctly 
marked off from the merely animal world, and so 
vastly different and superior that there was practically 
no sort of relation between them. Between the first 
human being and every other creature inhabiting the 
earth there was a gulf with no bridge, a difference so 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 


11 


profound that it could by no means he crossed from 
either side to the other. 

I say this with full knowledge of the prevalent theory 
that the human race was evolved from a merely animal 
ancestry; and far be it from me to deny the doctrine of 
evolution as an explanation of the method by which the 
Creator made the bodies of the first human beings. To 
that extent it may be true, with some modifications. 
Exactly how the first human beings were made has not 
yet been revealed to us. But, whatever the method, the 
fact remains that they were so different from all other 
creatures, and so unspeakably superior to even the best 
of them, as to constitute a new order. There was some¬ 
thing in the first man which was not in the lower ani¬ 
mals nor in any way derived from them, something 
divine which directly allied him to God. If the process 
of evolution was used in creating him, it was used only 
as a preparation for that which came after it,—just as 
the process of money-making up to the time when the 
imprint is put on the coin, or the signature is affixed to 
the bank note, is only preparatory to the final operation 
without which there would not be any money at all. 

When you have dug the ore from the depths of the 
mine, and have crushed it and smelted it and separated 
the metal, you have no money in your possession, if 
that is all that you have done. And when you have 
taken the metal to the mint, and have had it alloyed, 
and then rolled, and then cut into pieces of the particu¬ 
lar size and shape of the coins which you desire, you 
still have no money, if that is all that you have done. 
You have nothing but a certain number of pieces of 
metal. But put one of those pieces into the stamping 
machine, and a single quick stroke makes a different 
thing of it. No longer is it merely a piece of metal. It 


12 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 


is a piece of metal plus something which was not in the 
metal, something which is not metallic nor even ma¬ 
terial, but which gives it a higher value and a different 
function, something which makes money of it. The 
government’s imprint does that. In an instant it works 
the remarkable transformation. On a metallic founda¬ 
tion it superimposes a monetary character and creates a 
value which had no existence before. 

Even so when God made man, no matter by what 
process He made the animal part of him or how long 
a time He took in making it, there came a time when 
He added to that physical basis something that was not 
physical, something not pertaining to the animal world, 
something quite distinct from it and far superior to it; 
and that was His own image. He put His own imprint 
on the being whom He had made, and that imprint con¬ 
ferred the character and the prerogatives of manhood. 
Without that imprint there can be no manhood. With 
it, there stands a human being, allied as to his body 
with the physical world, but as to his soul with the 
spirit of God. 

That is what is meant by being made in God’s image. 
It consists in the fact that man possesses a spiritual 
nature—that he himself is a spirit, finite in degree, even 
as God is a spirit, the Infinite One. “ God is a spirit,” 
said Jesus to the woman of Samaria; and in the epistle 
to the Hebrews He is called “ the Father of spirits.” 
Spirit is spirit wherever it is found. It is essentially 
the same thing whether in God or in man. Every spir¬ 
itual being is made by the Father of spirits in His own 
spiritual likeness, and, having a nature like His own, is 
necessarily His child. Tliat is what came into existence 
when, as the book of Genesis says, “ man became a 
living soul.” 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 


13 


Moreover, the fact that man was thus made in the 
image of God involved his participation in all of those 
qualities by which spirit is always and everywhere sig¬ 
nalized—consciousness, intelligence, thought, will, and 
affection, together with immortality. Spirit is con¬ 
scious of its own existence, it thinks, it reasons, it wills, 
it loves, and it lives forever. There is nothing about it 
which is susceptible of decay. God possesses all of 
those qualities; and when He created man in His own 
image as a spiritual being, He imparted all of them to 
him as a matter of course. In the very nature of the 
case, the child inherited those qualities from the pater¬ 
nal Spirit who created him. 

Now, man has never lost that image. He is still a 
spiritual being, with all that is implied thereby. 

There are some people who contend that when man 
became sinful he lost the image of God. They would 
have us believe that the first human being was a holy 
as well as a spiritual being, and that when he forfeited 
his holiness he altogether forfeited his resemblance to 
God, and became a totally depraved being, a child of 
the devil, and subject to death. But there is nothing in 
the Bible, or in human experience, to sustain such 
a theory. 

There is nothing to indicate, in the first place, that 
the first human beings were ever possessed of holiness. 
If so, they would not have sinned; for a holy being 
cannot sin; it is morally impossible. Man’s likeness to 
God consisted not in his moral character, but in his 
spiritual nature. A child may be in the likeness of his 
father even though he is not nearly as good as his 
father. And so the first human beings, imperfect 
though they were and easily tempted to sin, were never¬ 
theless in the image of their heavenly Father; and so 


14 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 


are all other human beings, no matter how imperfect or 
sinful they are. 

Instead of saying that, when he sinned, man was 
deprived of the image of God, the Bible repeatedly 
speaks of him as possessing that image long after he 
had transgressed the commandments of God. 

For example, we are told in the ninth chapter of 
Genesis that, after the flood had occurred, the shedding 
of man’s blood was divinely forbidden for the reason 
that man was made in the image of God. If he had 
long since lost that image, such a reason for the pro¬ 
hibition would have had no- validity. 

In the eleventh chapter of Paul’s first epistle to the 
Corinthians, it is said that a man ought not to cover his 
head when he prays, “ forasmuch as he is the image and 
glory of God.” And in the third chapter of the epistle 
of James we are told that the tongue is an unruly mem¬ 
ber, for “ therewith bless we God, even the Father, and 
therewith curse we men, who are made after the simili¬ 
tude of God.” 

No, man has not lost the original image of God. If 
he had, he would be no longer human. That which is 
lost, in a certain sense, is not the image of God, but 
that on which the image of God is imprinted. Human 
souls may be lost, as millions of them are; but, how¬ 
ever lost they may be, they cannot lose the divine image 
which betokens their humanity. To use the Saviour’s 
own simile, it is not the image, but the coin, which is 
lost by its owner. The lost piece of money which the 
woman sought till she found it, and which Jesus used 
to represent the lost condition of men, was a piece of 
money none the less when it was lost than before. It 
still retained the image which gave it its value. And 
so mankind, however sinful, still retain the divine im- 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 


15 


print which allies them to God, and which is the prin¬ 
cipal consideration that makes them worth saving. 

And, oh, what a wonderful imprint it is which the 
Father Almighty has put on mankind! What a nature 
He has given to us! What dignity, what dominion, 
what capacity for knowledge, what endless possibilities 
for advancement in glory! 

“ When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy 
fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast or¬ 
dained ; what is man,” said the Psalmist, “ that Thou 
art mindful of him!”—which may be taken as an 
expression of astonishment that the Creator of the 
universe should deign to notice mankind or as an ex¬ 
pression of wonderment at the dignity and power 
which He has conferred on mankind. Whether the 
first of those sentiments was in the mind of the Psalm¬ 
ist may be open to question, but not so of the other 
one. “ For Thou hast made him a little lower than the 
angels,” said he, “ and hast crowned him with glory 
and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over 
the works of Thy hands ; Thou hast put all things 
under his feet.” 

When we let our thoughts dwell on the extent of the 
universe and the marvels of creation which modern 
science reveals to us, we are likely to be overwhelmed 
temporarily with a feeling of our own littleness and 
comparative insignificance. When we are told, for 
example, that the double star which the astronomers 
call Alpha Centauri is twenty-five billions of miles from 
the earth, and that, although it looks like a single bright 
speck in the sky, it really consists of two suns which 
are revolving around each other, and which are from a 
billion to three billions of miles from each other, the 
mind becomes lost in the thought of such immensities. 


16 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 


We are staggered in attempting to conceive of such 
distances. And when we consider, furthermore, that 
that particular double star is only one of many such, 
and is the nearest of all of them, and that when we 
should have traveled to even the farthest of them we 
should be only, as it were, at the outer porch of the 
universe, the thought arises, in spite of us,—what a 
pigmy is man, what an infinitesimal dot in the uni¬ 
verse ! Why, the world on which we live is but a dot 
in the universe, and we are dots on the dot, no larger 
in comparison than the animalcules in a drop of water 
in comparison with us. What presumption, then, some 
persons may say, to imagine that the Creator, the Infi¬ 
nite One, who holds the Milky Way itself, with all of 
its thousands upon thousands of suns, as a very little 
thing in the hollow of His hand, has any regard for us 
or pays any attention to us! What more are we to 
Him than so many animalcules, swarming, feeding, 
fighting, and dying in the confines of a muddy puddle ? 
That view of the matter will sometimes present itself. 

But look at the same facts in a different way. How 
do we know that the Milky Way consists of thousands 
of thousands of suns, systems, and nebulae? How do 
we know that the speck of light which we call Alpha 
Centauri is in reality two stupendous suns revolving 
around each other at such immense distances? How 
do we know that one of them, although it is no heavier, 
is a great deal larger than the other, and that one of 
their revolutions around each other requires eighty-one 
years? How do we, animalcules though we are in our 
physical proportions, have knowledge of such amazing 
facts in regard to the far away parts of the universe ? 
Ah, that is where the dignity of our nature reveals 
itself. That is where our superiority to material things 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 


17 


is disclosed. It is because we have minds, intellectual 
natures, which far transcend our fleshly bodies. It is 
because we are spirits, and, like the Infinite Spirit, can 
command the laws of the universe and make its forces 
our ministers. If man were measured only by his 
physical proportions, he would indeed be nothing more 
than an insignificant creature; but that is not the right 
way to measure him: for, as the poet Watts has well 
declared, “ The mind’s the standard of the man.” He 
must be judged by his intellectual and spiritual quali¬ 
ties. And there he soars, rising far above all material 
limitations. 

“ O God, I think Thy thoughts after Thee,” said 
Kepler, when he had discovered the wonderful law in 
accordance with which the orbits of the planets are 
determined; and that its what all of us do, more or 
less. We think God’s thoughts after Him; and, by 
virtue of that power and the spiritual nature which 
possesses it, a human being is as far superior to the 
whole solar system as a baby is superior to the house 
which contains it, no matter how splendid the structure 
may be; and when it shall have disappeared, leaving 
“ not a rack behind,” he himself will still be rejoicing 
in the glory to which his likeness to his heavenly Father 
entitles him. Marvel of marvels, that within these 
puny fleshly bodies we have a nature so sublime, so 
divinely imprinted with likeness to God! 

Such being the case, what is our duty because of it ? 
Since we are made in God’s image, what ought we 
to do ? 

“ Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, 
and unto God the things that are God’s ”—nothing less 
than that is the duty of every one. Every human being 
rightfully belongs unto God, and is under an obligation 


18 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 


as everlasting as himself to devote himself to God’s 
service. It is both his duty and his privilege thus to 
devote himself, with all of the varied powers which his 
Creator has given him. Having inherited a godlike 
nature, he ought to live in a godlike manner. And only 
by so doing can he accomplish his destiny. Only so 
can any of us walk worthy of the nature which the 
Creator has given us and attain to the blessedness for 
which He created us. Not to do so is grievously to 
wrong our own spirits at the same time that we grieve 
His Holy Spirit. It is to be like a lost coin, or a coin 
rusting in uselessness, which ought to be brightened by 
continual usefulness. 

When Wendell Phillips was only fourteen years of 
age, he heard a sermon by Lyman Beecher, entitled 
“ You Belong to God.” Returning to his home, he 
went directly to his own room, and fervently prayed 
that God would help him to live a truly righteous life. 
“ O God,” said he, “ I belong to Thee. Take what is 
Thine own ”; and from that time forth he felt that he 
was irrevocably pledged to God’s service. 

Blessed be God, that He has made us in His own 
image! Gladly let us consecrate ourselves to His 
sendee. Henceforth let every one of us say, in the 
meditations of his heart and by means of his conduct, 
“ O God, I belong to Thee. Take what is Thine own.” 


II 


THE INCARNATION 

“ The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of 
grace and truth . . . and of his fulness have we all re¬ 
ceived, and grace for grace ”— John i : 14 , 16 . 

H ISTORY tells us that, at the time of his death, 
the apostle John was in the ninety-fifth year 
of his age. As Jesus had predicted, he lived 
till after the fall of the city of Jerusalem, the dispersion 
of the Jewish nation, and the establishment of Chris¬ 
tianity as the manifestation of God’s kingdom on earth. 
Before he passed away Christian churches had multi¬ 
plied, especially along the shores of the Mediterranean 
Sea. Sufficient time had then elapsed for the introduc¬ 
tion of certain false doctrines among them, owing to 
the prevalence of philosophical theories which some 
people mistakenly tried to combine with Christianity. 
Thus arose what is called the Gnostic heresy, in view 
of which the apostle wrote that part of his gospel, 
commonly known as its proem, of which my text is a 
portion. 

The Gnostics were a set of people who claimed su¬ 
perior knowledge; and, according to their teaching, the 
material universe was not created by God, but by a 
subordinate being who was one of a long series of 
emanations from God, to whom they gave the name of 
aeons. They said that God was too holy and too spir¬ 
itual in His nature to have created a universe which 
contains evil elements; and so they held that this uni- 

19 


20 


THE INCARNATION 


verse, including humanity, was made by the lowest of 
that series of emanations, the aeon whom they called 
the logos. Another was called by a Greek name whose 
meaning is life, and another by a name whose meaning 
is light; and the whole series, taken together, was called 
the pleroma, which means the fulness of the emanations 
proceeding from God. Each of them was supposed to 
be a spiritual being and to have a certain measure of 
creative ability. 

There is no word in our language which exactly 
corresponds to the Greek word logos. It cannot be 
exactly translated into English. Indeed, like some of 
our own words, it has various meanings. Thought, 
reason, speech, expression, power, energy,—each of 
those terms corresponds to some aspect or phase of 
its meaning; but we have no single term or phrase 
with precisely the same meaning that the word logos 
conveyed. Our English words logic and logical are 
derived from it, and the expression “ logical cause ” 
comes pretty near to the meaning which the Gnostics 
probably gave to it when they used it as the name of 
the imaginary aeon who, according to their philosophy, 
created the world. 

They furthermore taught that, to deliver mankind 
from the element of evil which the logos had put into 
them, another aeon, higher in the series, had come to 
this world, and had been manifested to mankind as the 
Lord Jesus Christ; and, inasmuch as all flesh was sup¬ 
posed to be evil, they said that Jesus, instead of having 
a material body, had only the semblance of such a body 
with which to appear among men, and that he only 
apparently lived a human life and only apparently died 
on the cross. 

In view of that fantastic theory, St. John wrote the 


THE INCARNATION 


21 


proem of the wonderful gospel in which he has re¬ 
corded the life and teachings of Christ. And his mean¬ 
ing would be somewhat clearer if, instead of saying, 
“ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was 
with God, and the Word was God,” the translators of 
the passage had rendered it in this way: “ In the be¬ 
ginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and 
the logos was God ”; for logos is the term which he 
actually used, and, instead of meaning “ word ” in our 
sense of the expression, it rather means the creative 
cause. 

In this proem, the apostle emphasizes the real truth 
of Christianity in opposition to the nonsensical theory 
of the Gnostics. With a few vigorous sentences he 
brushes away the whole series of imaginary icons be¬ 
tween God and mankind, together with the Gnostic 
theory as to the nature of Christ; and, referring the 
creation of all things directly to God, he declares that 
Jesus Christ was human not only in appearance but 
also in fact, that He had a body of flesh, and that in 
Him was incarnated the actual pleroma, the real fulness 
of divine qualities, to which spiritual life and light 
belong. He says that the logos which created the 
world, instead of being a remote emanation from 
God, whose influence was to be counteracted by 
Christ, was with God in the beginning, and was 
nothing but God’s own activity—God’s thought, God’s 
energy, God’s reason and wisdom and power and love 
—which is the same as saying that it was God Him¬ 
self. And, furthermore, he says that Christ, instead 
of being only an emanation from God, masquerading 
in the semblance of a real human being, was an actual 
human incarnation of all of the divine attributes by 
which the world was created—that in Him was light, 


22 THE INCARNATION 

% 

and in Him was life, and in Him was a full revelation 
of God. 

That is not saying that Jesus was God. It is saying 
that God was in Jesus, fully manifesting the divine at¬ 
tributes by which, in the beginning, He created the 
world. The apostle does not say that in the beginning 
there were two persons, each of whom was God, and 
that one of them, called the logos, became incarnate in 
Christ. He simply uses the word logos as a name for 
God’s attributes, which he identifies with God Himself, 
as when he elsewhere says that God is love; and then 
he says that those attributes in their glorious totality 
were embodied and revealed in Christ; as St. Paul also 
teaches in his epistle to the Colossians, where he says 
that “ in him dwelleth all the fulness ( pleroma ) of the 
Godhead bodily.” 

That is the unspeakably glorious truth which we cele¬ 
brate on Christmas day—the truth that when Jesus 
Christ was born there came into this world a human 
being in whom God so incarnated His own divine at¬ 
tributes that He represents God to us, and is a perfect 
revelation of God’s character and desires and inten¬ 
tions concerning us. 

If you ask for an explanation of it—as to the method 
by which God was incarnate in Christ, or as to the 
exact nature of the relation between them—you ask 
for the explanation of an insoluble mystery. As the 
apostle declares, “ Great is the mystery of godliness; 
he who was manifested in the flesh, justified in the 
spirit, seen of angels, preached among the nations, be¬ 
lieved on in the world, received up in glory.” Jesus 
Himself said, “ No one knoweth the Son but the 
Father ; neither knoweth any one the Father save the 
Son and he to whom the Son will reveal Him.” We 


THE INCARNATION 


23 


know the Father through Jesus Christ; but God only 
knows just how He so dwelt in Jesus Christ as to make 
that revelation possible. We have the wonderful Bib¬ 
lical story of the birth and the life and the resurrection 
of Christ. From beginning to end it is exceptional, 
marvelous, incomprehensible by our human intelligence. 
But that is no reason for rejecting or doubting it. A 
fact does not depend on our knowledge concerning it, 
neither is it invalidated by our ignorance concerning it. 
We may believe it and utilize it without understanding 
it. And it is a glorious fact that, in a way which at 
present is beyond our comprehension, God so dwelt in 
Jesus Christ as to reveal Himself to us, and finally to 
reconcile the whole family of mankind to Himself. 

Never was there another such glorious revelation. 
There have been other manifestations of the divine 
nature and attributes, but none to compare with that 
which is given in Christ. 

God is revealed to some extent through what we call 
the laws and the forces of Nature and the results which 
they produce for the good of mankind. As the Scrip¬ 
ture declares, “ The invisible things of Him from the 
creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood 
by the things that are made, even His eternal power 
and Godhead ”; and, again, “ In times past He suffered 
all nations to walk in their own ways; nevertheless He 
left not Himself without witness, in that He did good, 
and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, 
filling our hearts with food and gladness.” All of our 
material blessings are owing to the creative power and 
goodness of God, and are to some extent manifesta¬ 
tions thereof. We should take them as such; and when 
we eat our daily bread it should be with a thankful 
realization of the truth that 


24 , 


THE INCARNATION 


“ Back of the loaf is the snowy flour, 

And hack of the flour the mill, 

And hack of the mill are the wheat and the shower, 

And the sun and the Father's will.” 

Ah, yes, back of all of our material blessings, and 
back of Nature itself, is the creative energy of God— 
His providence, His wisdom, His power, His love. 
The divine logos, which was with Him in the begin¬ 
ning, is the cause of all created things, and through His 
visible works we get some intimation of His nature and 
character; still further intimations of which have been 
given to us through godly men who spoke as His Holy 
Spirit informed and directed them. At sundry times 
and in divers manners He had so spoken to the world 
before the advent of Christ. 

But all such revelations were very faint and imper¬ 
fect, compared with that which He has given to us 
through His Son Jesus Christ. They were as candle¬ 
light to sunlight, in comparison with the gospel. In 
Jesus Christ there was so perfect an expression of 
God’s nature and character that He could truthfully 
say, “ He who hath seen me hath seen the Father; I am 
in the Father and the Father in me; I and my Father 
are one.” In Him the divine logos was so completely 
embodied that he identified Himself with it as God’s 
representative, saying, “ I came down from heaven ”; 
“ Before Abraham was, I am ”; “ I am the light of the 
world ”; “l am the bread of life ”; “ I am the resur¬ 
rection and the life ”; “ As the Father hath life in Him¬ 
self, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Him¬ 
self ”; and “ All men should honour the Son, even as 
they honour the Father.” No other human being 
would ever have been justified in using such language; 


1 


THE INCARNATION 25 

but Jesus Christ was fully justified, because of the 
great truth which is set forth in my text. 

Of course, we cannot understand it; the mystery is 
too great for us. But an illustration may help us to 
grasp its significance. 

Astronomers tell us that the sun is surrounded by a 
luminous envelope, consisting of certain rarefied sub¬ 
stances which are being continually generated by it. 
That envelope is called the photosphere. It proceeds 
from the sun, and is really a part of the sun, and with¬ 
out it the sun would be invisible. It is from the photo¬ 
sphere that we derive both the light and the heat; so 
that to us it is practically a revelation of the sun, or the 
sun in the process of revealing itself. 

Suppose that a portion of the photosphere should be 
sent to this world, and here be formed into a glorious 
orb for our benefit. What a difference there would be 
between such a representative of the heavenly lumi¬ 
nary and even the best of those light-giving and heat- 
giving agencies which have hitherto been given to us! 
They are all indirectly derived from the sun; but the 
photospheric orb might say, I am the light and the heat 
of the sun; he that hath seen me hath seen the sun. 

Even so in Jesus Christ there was such a perfect in¬ 
carnation of God’s nature and character that He could 
truthfully use such language as that which I have 
quoted. In Him “ the sun of righteousness ” is clearly 
revealed to us: “ For God, who commanded the light 
to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to 
give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in 
the face of Jesus Christ.” 

That is what the whole human race was waiting for. 
It had believed in God, in some fashion, for thousands 
of years; but it knew not whether to think of Him as 


26 


THE INCARNATION 


one or as many, as good or as evil, as worthy to be 
trusted or only to be feared; and deep down in the 
hearts of men there was an ineradicable yearning for a 
trustworthy answer to the great questions which nat¬ 
ural religion was asking. “ Oh, that I knew where I 
might find Him! that I might come even to His seat! ” 
said the suffering patriarch; and in that saying he gave 
voice to the desire of all nations—a desire which is 
satisfactorily answered in Christ. Christ is God’s 
answer to that longing of humanity. 

Well might the angels rejoice at His advent; well 
might the wise men bring their gifts to His cradle; and 
well may all people unite in His praise. With His ad¬ 
vent a new era began in this world. As when the sun 
arises above the horizon, the light thereof increases and 
spreads wider and wider as it mounts to the zenith, so, 
ever since the Saviour’s advent, His gospel has been 
steadily extending its influence, carrying spiritual life 
and light to the minds and souls of mankind. Grace 
and truth have come by Him, and of His fulness have 
we all received. To Him we are indebted for our 
knowledge of God’s fatherhood and of universal human 
brotherhood. To Him we owe our faith in a blessed 
immortality. To Him we look up as our model of 
perfectness, and from Him come the principles of our 
civilization. Let us, then, heartily rejoice in His ad¬ 
vent, and commemorate it not only with Christmas 
observances but with consecrated Christian lives. 

In mediaeval times, when a church bell was being 
moulded, it was customary for the people to cast some 
of their golden and silver ornaments into the mass of 
molten metal, in order to make it ring more sweetly. 
And, to them at least, it must have rung more sweetly 
than it otherwise would; because, whenever they heard 


THE INCARNATION 


27 


its tones, it appealed not only to their hearing but to 
their memories and their affections and their conscious¬ 
ness of self-sacrifice in the service of Christ. Every 
ornament they had cast into it made it sound the more 
sweetly. The more richly they had given to it, the 
more sweetly it gave back to them. 

Would you also have the Christmas bells sound more 
and more sweetly as long as you live? Then mingle 
with your rejoicings over the advent of Christ some 
self-sacrifice for Him, some evidence of consecration 
to Him, that you may have the precious consciousness 
of contributing something to make known His way 
upon the earth, His saving health among all nations. 
Freely every one of us has received of His fulness; 
freely let us give to Him such gifts as He desires of 
us, and thereby assist Him to hasten the day when He 
shall have drawn the whole family of mankind to 
Himself and, as the result of His ministry, God shall 
be all in all. 


Ill 

THE MIRACLES OE JESUS CHRIST 

* The Jews therefore came round about him, and said unto 
him, How long dost thou hold us in suspense? If thou art 
the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you, 
and ye believe not; the works that I do in my Father’s name, 
these bear witness of me ”— John 10 : 24 , 25 . 

I F the New Testament gives us a reliable history of 
the ministry of Jesus Christ, He did a great many 
very wonderful things,—which in our translation 
are sometimes called miracles, sometimes wonders, 
sometimes signs, and sometimes works,—things which 
no other human being could do, and which apparently 
indicated that He either posessed supernatural power 
or was assisted by some being or beings who did. We 
are told, for example, not only that He cured all man¬ 
ner of diseases without any medicine, instantaneously 
healing the blind and the deaf and the leprous and the 
paralyzed, but that He even raised the dead to life, 
quelled a tempest without any visible means, walked 
upon the waves of the sea, transformed water into 
wine, fed thousands of people with a few loaves and 
fishes, and, after suffering a horrible death on the 
cross, returned to life, and arose from the grave, and 
continued to live in this world for about forty days, at 
the end of which time He was taken up into heaven. 
A large part of the four gospels is devoted to an ac¬ 
count of such miraculous deeds and of the comments 
which they elicited, nearly a fifth of the entire history 
having reference to such matters. 

28 


THE MIRACLES OF JESUS CHRIST 


29 


And, furthermore, if the record is true, Jesus not 
only claimed for Himself the power to perform such 
miracles, but claimed that His performance of them 
was an evidence of His Messiahship. 

At the very outset of His ministry, when the Jewish 
rulers challenged Him, and demanded a sign of His 
authority for driving the money-changers out of the 
temple, His answer was, “ Destroy this temple and in 
three days I will raise it up,” referring thereby to the 
crowning miracle of His resurrection from the grave. 
When John the Baptist, in his prison cell, began to have 
some doubt about Him, and sent messengers to ask 
Him whether He was really the Messiah, His answer 
was, “ Go your way and tell John what things ye have 
seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, 
the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are 
raised, to the poor the gospel is preached.” To His 
disciples He said, on the night of the Last Supper, 
“ Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father 
in me; or else believe me for the very works’ sake.” 
And of those who had rejected Him He said, “ If I 
had not done among them the works which none other 
man did, they had not had sin: but now they have both 
seen and hated both me and my Father ” : which agrees 
with what He said to His questioners on the occasion 
to which my text refers. “ If thou art the Christ,” 
said they, “ tell us plainly ”; to which He answered, “ I 
told you, and ye believe not; the works that I do in my 
Father’s name, these bear witness of me.” 

Nothing can be plainer, if the New Testament is 
true, than that Jesus habitually appealed to His mir¬ 
acles as an evidence of His Messiahship. Ordinary 
works, such as any good man might perform, would 
have proved nothing in regard to it; they would have 


30 


THE MIRACLES OF JESUS CHRIST 


indicated no peculiar relation to God, and He could not 
have referred to them in support of His claim. 

Not that the mere fact of working miracles would 
have proved Him to be the Christ, nor that Fie ever 
claimed that it would. According to the record, He 
based His claim not simply on the fact of His working 
miracles, but on the character of His miracles, taken 
in connection with the character of His teachings. He 
claimed that His teachings were supported by His 
miracles, because, taken in conjunction, they showed 
that He was acting in conjunction with God. The 
works to which He appealed were those which He did 
in His father’s name; and He appealed to them because 
they were such as might reasonably be expected of Him 
if He taught the truth in regard to God and His own 
relation to God: and that fact should always be borne 
in mind when we are considering the credibility of His 
claim. “ We know that thou art a teacher come from 
God,” said Nicodemus, “ for no man can do these 
miracles that thou doest except God be with him ”; and, 
if the record is reliable, that is exactly what Jesus 
maintained—that the character of His miracles sup¬ 
ported His claim to be a teacher sent from God, be¬ 
cause it was incredible that a false pretender should 
perform not only such miraculous but such benefi¬ 
cent works. 

And as Jesus Himself appealed to them as signs of 
His peculiar relation to God, so did His apostles, ac¬ 
cording to the record. After narrating the miracle of 
changing water into wine, the apostle John says, “ This 
beginning of miracles ”—or, as the Revised Version 
renders it, “ This beginning of his signs ”—“ did Jesus 
in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory, and his 
disciples believed on him ”; and near the close of His 


THE MIRACLES OF JESUS CHRIST 


31 


gospel, after telling of the resurrection, he says, 
“ Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence 
of his disciples, which are not written in this book: but 
these are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the 
Christ, and that believing ye may have life in his 
name.” And St. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, said 
to his hearers that Jesus was a man approved of God 
among them by mighty works and wonders and signs 
which God had done by Him in their midst, as they 
themselves also knew. 

Even His enemies, we are told, did not deny that He 
actually performed such works. They acknowledged 
the fact, but attributed it to the aid of demoniac 
powers.. They refused to acknowledge that His mir¬ 
acles were a sign of His Christhood, partly because, as 
He told them, they were not of His sheep, and would 
not listen to His voice, nor believe in Him even though 
He should rise from the dead, and partly because their 
conception of the Messiah was that of a temporal and 
military ruler who would free them from the yoke of 
Rome and exalt them to a leading position among the 
nations of the world. When they demanded a sign of 
Him in proof of His Messiahship, that was the kind of 
Messiahship which they wished Him to prove. Of that 
He of course would give them no sign, and to them 
His miracles were no sign that He was really the Mes¬ 
siah whom the nation was looking for. 

But while they, in their hostility to Him, refused to 
acknowledge that His wonderful works were a sign of 
His Christhood, many others did acknowledge it; and, 
as Renan has admitted, skeptical though he was in re¬ 
gard to the miracles, Christianity would never have 
made any headway if the early Christians had not be¬ 
lieved in them. Belief in them was bound up with the 


32 


THE MIRACLES OF JESUS CHRIST 


faith of the early Church in the divine Sonship of 
Jesus, and the Church could not have survived with¬ 
out it. 

How is it today ? Ought we also to believe in them ? 
Can we reasonably believe in them ? In answer to that 
question, let me say in the first place, that, in order to 
be logical, we must either believe in them, or reject the 
whole of the New Testament as unworthy of credence 
so far as the life and teachings of Jesus Christ are 
concerned. We cannot logically believe in the rest of 
the record while refusing to believe in the account of 
His miracles. I do not say that no one can really 
believe in the rest of the record, and believe that Jesus 
was the Christ, while refusing to believe in the account 
of His miracles; because, as a matter of fact, some 
people do. I only say that such people are very illog¬ 
ical. There are a good many illogical people on earth, 
and some of them belong to the Christian Church. 
Logically, however, it is as impossible to eliminate and 
reject the miraculous part of the New Testament with¬ 
out destroying the credibility of the record as a whole 
as for Shylock to have taken a pound of flesh from 
Antonio without taking his blood and destroying his 
life. For if the writers of the New Testament wrote 
falsely or erroneously in regard to the miracles, which 
occupy such a considerable part of the record and are 
so closely interwoven with its doctrinal teachings, what 
guaranty have we that the rest of their statements are 
any more trustworthy? To say that we are warranted 
in rejecting the miraculous parts of the history while 
accepting those parts of it which involve no such ele¬ 
ment is to violate the first principles of legitimate criti¬ 
cism. No one would apply such a rule of interpretation 
to any other history or ostensible history. As well say 


THE MIRACLES OF JESUS CHRIST 


33 


that in the story of Baron Munchausen we ought to 
accept all but the impossible portions, because all of the 
rest of it might easily have happened. That will not 
do. The incredible portions discredit what might 
otherwise be credible in the story, and we properly 
regard the whole account as fictitious. On the same 
principle, if the New Testament account of Christ’s 
miracles is incredible, constituting, as it does, so large a 
part of the narrative, it discredits the whole of it. 
Writers who- would either falsify or be mistaken to so 
great an extent would be unworthy of any confidence. 

It is conceivable, of course, that any author, how¬ 
ever honest, may make some mistakes, and that even 
the authors of the New Testament have made some 
mistakes in regard to the miracles which they attribute 
to Jesus, but not that they were mistaken with refer¬ 
ence to all of them or to the majority of them. They 
knew whether their statements were true in the main, 
and, if not, nothing which they say is deserving of 
confidence. 

But, supposing that their testimony is utterly dis¬ 
credited, and that no miracles were performed, what 
difference does it make, some people say, so far as the 
great doctrines of the Bible are concerned? Are not 
those doctrines self-evidencing, and can we not believe 
in them just as reasonably, regardless of the question 
as to whether the history is reliable or not ? No; not 
by any means. 

Undoubtedly, some of those doctrines seem to shine 
by their own light to a person who has been educated 
from his. childhood to believe in them; but in the be¬ 
ginning they did not shine by their own light, nor do 
they even now to people who have not the Christian 
faith, nor entirely so to those who have. To a great 


34 


THE MIRACLES OF JESUS CHRIST 


extent they depend for their credibility on the authority 
and trustworthiness of him who proclaimed them, and 
our confidence in them must be largely determined by 
what we believe in regard to him, just as our confidence 
in the statements of a person on the witness-stand 
largely depends on what we believe as to his history 
and character. If we have reason to believe that the 
witness himself is a reliable person, we accept what he 
says, even if we ourselves are unable to prove it; 
whereas, if we doubt his reliability, we doubt what he 
says unless we have some positive proof of it. His 
statements may be true in either case, but in the latter 
case we have not the same faith in them as if we had 
faith in his personal character. And, even so, if we 
believe that the doctrines of the New Testament were 
proclaimed by such a person as it represents Jesus of 
Nazareth to have been, our faith in them is vastly 
stronger than if we reject what it says in regard to 
His history. 

Our faith in the great doctrine of God’s Fatherhood, 
for example, is strengthened immensely if we believe 
that it was taught by one who was peculiarly the Son 
of God and who lived in such a relation to Him that He 
actually did what the New Testament says He did. 
There may be no direct connection between the doctrine 
and the miracles, but there is a very direct connection 
between faith in the doctrine and faith in the miracles: 
since the miracles, if genuine, while they do not prove 
the doctrine, do show the reliability of Him who pro¬ 
claimed it,—for He surely could not have performed 
them unless God had been with Him. 

But still the question recurs, Can we reasonably be¬ 
lieve in them ? Granting that the record of them is an 
integral part of the gospel story,—granting that the 


THE MIRACLES OF JESUS CHRIST 


35 


early Church believed in them, and that without such a 
belief the Christian religion would have had no exis¬ 
tence,—must we not, in the light of modern knowl¬ 
edge, refuse to believe in them and attribute the record 
to the ignorance of the writers and the credulity of the 
age in which they lived ? So we are sometimes told in 
these days. It is said that in the time of Christ not 
only His disciples but people in general were exceed¬ 
ingly credulous, knowing nothing about the laws of 
nature, and that therefore they believed in miracles; 
whereas our knowledge of nature’s laws makes it ex¬ 
tremely unreasonable for us to believe in such violations 
of them. But that assertion involves two unprovable 
assumptions. 

For, in the first place, there is no evidence that the 
authors of the New Testament were especially credu¬ 
lous, or that they lived in an especially credulous age. 
The advocates of that theory bring forward no proof 
of it. Their reasoning moves around in a very limited 
circle. First they tell us that people then believed in 
miracles because it was a credulous age, and then they 
tell us that the age was credulous because people then 
believed in miracles,—unwarrantably assuming in both 
of those statements that to believe in the miraculous is 
an evidence of credulity. Whereas., the real evidence, 
SO' far as it goes, seems to show that the first century 
of the Christian era was strongly inclined to skepti¬ 
cism. There were credulous people then as now, but 
there were skeptics also, and on the whole there was a 
prevalent disposition to disbelieve in religion. The old 
religions were dying, and, like Pontius Pilate, men 
were prone to treat the truth in a cynical way. The 
Sadducean spirit was abroad in the land. Moreover, it 
was an age of great legal ability. The Roman law 


36 


THE MIRACLES OF JESUS CHRIST 


extended throughout the Roman Empire, and its offi¬ 
cials were present in every part of it, laying down 
those rules of evidence which have become the founda¬ 
tion of our own legal system. There was no predispo¬ 
sition to believe in Christ’s miracles without sufficient 
evidence, so far as any one knows. Surely, neither the 
Pharisees nor the Sadducees were inclined to believe in 
them. They were determined not to believe in them, 
nor to let any one believe in them, if they could possibly 
prevent it; and they were always on hand to examine 
the evidence. 

Consider, for example, the healing of the blind man 
of which we read in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of 
John. How thoroughly it was investigated, according 
to the record, first by the man’s neighbours, and then 
by the Pharisees, who not only examined the man him¬ 
self, but even sent for his parents and questioned them 
in regard to him, as to whether he had actually been 
blind from his birth! Or read the account of the rais¬ 
ing of Lazarus, and see how impossible that credulity 
alone should have led so many to believe in it, es¬ 
pecially as among them there were some who straight¬ 
way told the Pharisees. Or read the account of 
Christ’s own resurrection, and see how utterly opposed 
to believing in it even His disciples were until they 
could disbelieve no longer. Instead of being credulous, 
they were at first quite incredulous, regarding as an 
idle tale the report of the women who had been to the 
sepulchre; while Thomas was so skeptical that he re¬ 
fused even to take the word of his fellow disciples, but 
insisted on seeing the wounded body of Jesus and put¬ 
ting his finger into the print of the nails. Does that 
look like credulity? Or does the conversion of Saul 
of Tarsus, when he was engaged in destroying the dis- 


THE MIRACLES OF JESUS CHRIST 


37 


ciples of Jesus, have the appearance of being due to a 
credulous disposition ? 

Oh, no; the assumption that the early Christians 
were a credulous people, who believed that Jesus was 
a miracle-worker because they desired to believe it and 
were easily imposed upon, cannot be maintained; there 
is nothing to support it. 

Nor is there anything whatever to support the as¬ 
sumption that the miracles which Jesus is said to have 
wrought would have violated the laws of the natural 
world. The Bible nowhere says or intimates that they 
were in violation of nature’s laws, and no one can 
venture to say that they were, or to deny them because 
he assumes that they would have been, without practi¬ 
cally assuming that he knows all about nature, and is 
competent to set limits to what its laws will allow. 
Who is there that can properly pretend to such 
knowledge ? 

Modern science, no doubt, is a very great thing, but 
no man is so scientific as to understand all of the laws 
of nature and to know all that can be done in accord¬ 
ance with them. We are learning more and more about 
them, and the more we learn the more we can do. We 
are doing hundreds of things today in accordance with 
the laws of nature which would have been considered 
impossible a few years ago, and by-and-by a great many 
other things will be possible for us, because we shall 
understand those laws a great deal better then than 
now. Indeed, what does our modern science consist in, 
if not in our increased and increasing ability to do with 
the laws and forces of nature what used to be regarded 
as impossibilities? And who shall place a limit to it? 
Who that knows anything of recent achievements with 
chemistry and electricity and other wonderful agencies, 


38 


THE MIRACLES OF JESUS CHRIST 


—who that knows the great discovery of the correla¬ 
tion of forces, any force being changeable into each of 
the others, and the probability that all substances are 
but different forms or arrangements of the same origi¬ 
nal substance,—who, I say, that knows these things 
will venture to set a limit as to what may be done with 
the forces of nature in accordance with the laws of 
nature? When mankind shall have become perfect in 
their knowledge of nature and in their own spiritual 
qualities, what may they not do which would now be 
miraculous ? 

And if Jesus Christ was a perfect man, in His 
alliance with God, in His spiritual qualities, and in His 
knowledge of the laws of nature and His ability to use 
its forces, why is it not entirely credible and probable 
that He was able to do such works as the Bible ascribes 
to Him? Modern science, instead of making it less 
credible, increases it credibility. From that point of 
view, His miracles were signs of His perfect human¬ 
ity; they showed that, as the Bible says, He was the 
head of every man, the model man, the perfect type 
towards which the human race is tending. It was 
natural for such a man to do exactly such things as the 
Bible ascribes to Him, for the purpose of introducing 
His kingdom on earth and indicating the nature of His 
God-given mission. 

It is therefore reasonable and helpful for us to be¬ 
lieve in the record. Some people say that they could 
more easily believe in Him were it not for the miracles, 
and they probably think so; but that is because they 
have not attained to the right point of view. The diffi¬ 
culty lies in their mistaken ideas in regard to the matter. 
Let them surmount that difficulty by getting the correct 
idea as to the nature of His miracles and the relation 


THE MIRACLES OF JESUS CHRIST 


39 


which they bear to His exceptional mission, and then 
they will find, like a traveler who reaches the top of a 
mountain, that what formerly obstructed their vision 
now widens it and gives them a vastly more glorious 
outlook. Rising to a point of view where they see 
that the miracles which Jesus performed were not in 
violation of the laws of the universe, but that they 
showed His understanding and control of those laws, 
and were signs of His perfect alliance with God, they 
will realize his Christhood as never before, and the 
glory of His mission and of what it signifies for man¬ 
kind. For the works that He did in His Father’s name 
bear witness to the truth of His heavenly teachings, 
and, together with them, furnish ample assurance that 
He was verily the Son of God, the appointed Saviour 
of the world. 


IV 


THE BASIS OF OUR BELIEF IN 
IMMORTALITY 

“If a man die, shall he live againt ”— Job 14: 14. 

" Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
who, according to his great mercy, begat us again unto a 
living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the 
dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and 
that fadeth not aivay .”—I P£T. 1: 3, 4 [R. V.]. 

Y OUNG people, as a rule, do not look far ahead. 
A child is interested in only the present and the 
immediate future. Its thoughts, like its foot¬ 
steps, are short and restricted, and seldom wander far 
away. It thinks of a year as a long, long time, beyond 
which lies a hazy period with which it now has no con¬ 
cern. But as people become older, they look farther 
ahead and think more of futurity. Their thoughts run 
on, and on, and on, and the years seem shorter and 
shorter to them. They make their plans for not merely 
a day or a week, but for many a year in advance, and 
more and more feel the need of an extension of time in 
which to fulfil their enlarging designs; and those who 
feel it the most of all are those who have made the 
most advancement. 

Said Victor Hugo, when he was near to the end of 
his life in this world, “ For half a century I have been 
writing my thoughts in prose, verse, history, philoso¬ 
phy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, song—I 
have tried all. But I feel that I have not said the 
thousandth part of what is in me. My work is only a 

40 


BASIS OF OUR BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 41 

beginning. My work is hardly above its foundation. 
I would be glad to see it mounting and mounting for¬ 
ever. The thirst for the infinite proves infinity.” And 
the feeling which he thus expressed has been shared by 
the wisest and the best in all ages, whatever their opin¬ 
ions as to the future have been. Even such of them as 
have had no belief in immortality have desired it and 
felt the need of it. 

In the early part of his remarkable career as a scien¬ 
tist, Professor Huxley made light of the doctrine of 
immortality, as a baseless hypothesis of no practical 
consequence; but when he was older he said, in a letter 
to John Morley, “ It is a curious thing that I find my 
dislike to the thought of extinction increasing as I get 
older and nearer the goal. It flashes across me at all 
sorts of times with a sort of horror that in 1900 I shall 
probably know no more of what is going on than I did 
in 1800. I had sooner be in hell a great deal—at any 
rate, in one of the upper circles, where the climate and 
the company are not too trying.” 

Herbert Spencer also, in the last volume which he 
published, left an exceedingly mournful and pathetic 
confession in regard to his agnosticism. He yearned 
for a life beyond the grave, although his philosophy 
forbade him to believe in it. “ It seems a strange and 
repugnant conclusion,” he said, “ that with the cessa¬ 
tion of consciousness at death, there ceases to be any 
knowledge of having existed.” 

Because it is a strange and repugnant conclusion, the 
great mass of humanity has never accepted it. Living 
in this world for so short a time, with*the certainty of 
physical death always confronting them, mankind have 
always felt that this life is not long enough, and have 
asked the question—oh, how earnestly—“ If a man 



42 BASIS OF OUR BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 


die, shall he live again?” And, with comparatively 
few exceptions, they have always answered, Yes, he 
shall. 

In spite of all appearances and all arguments to the 
contrary, mankind from the beginning have believed in 
immortality. They have refused to believe that the 
death of the body involves the death of the soul and 
that a man finishes his whole existence at the door of 
the tomb. They have always believed in some sort of 
an after life; and the reason has been not merely that 
they wished to believe in it, but that they could not dis¬ 
believe in it. The belief has been intuitive, not a matter 
of reasoning nor a matter of evidence, with the great 
majority of them. Something within themselves has 
said, There must be, and there surely is, a continued 
life beyond the grave. The soul has refused to identify 
itself with the flesh and has intuitively asserted its con¬ 
tinued existence, in some fashion or other, beyond 
death and the grave. 

“A solemn murmur of the soul 
Tells of the world to he. 

As travellers hear the billows roll 
Before they reach the sea.” 

But, nevertheless, the belief in a future life which 
has been held by most people has been of so vague a 
sort, and so mingled with fears, that they have found 
but little comfort in it. It has not enabled them to 
regard the transfer to another state of existence as 
otherwise than lamentable. For, while they have be¬ 
lieved in some sort of immortality, they have generally 
regarded the future life as a lower state of existence, 
and have looked forward to it not with hope, but with 
dread and uncertainty. Homer makes one of his 


BASIS OF OUR BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 43 


heroes say that he would rather be a slave on earth 
than reign the king of all the dead; and of another, who 
has died, he says: 

“ The soul unwilling wings her way, 

(The beauteous body left a load of clay,) 

Flits to the lone uncomfortable coast, 

A naked, wandering, melancholy ghost.” 

Such was the prevalent belief among all of the nations 
before the advent of Christ, as it continues to be among 
those that are not Christianized. 

But not so with those people who have accepted 
Christianity, if they have accepted it in all of its blessed 
significance. There are some Christians, it must be ad¬ 
mitted, whose belief in immortality affords them but 
little comfort, because of the imperfection of their un¬ 
derstanding of Christianity. They have not fully 
learned the truth concerning it. But to those who have 
learned it, the prospect of a future life is clouded with 
not a shadow of uncertainty or hopelessness. It is 
certified beyond all controversy, and is illumined with 
such a radiance as makes them look forward to it not 
with fear, but with cheerfulness. To them “ Death’s 
truer name is Onward,” and 

“ The grave itself is but a covered bridge 
Leading from light to light through a brief darkness.” 

They can say, with the apostle Paul, “ All things are 
ours, whether the world, or life, or death, or things 
present, or things to come”; and, looking forward 
with that assurance, they can face death and eternity 
with hope and good cheer. 

On Easter day we celebrate our possession of that 


44 BASIS OF OUR BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 


glorious assurance. We believe in a blessed immor¬ 
tality, not only for ourselves but for all of the rest of 
mankind. We believe that just beyond the grave is a 
world which we call the spirit world, and that when our 
fleshly bodies die we enter into that spirit world, there 
to have what the Bible calls spiritual bodies, as much 
superior to these perishing bodies of flesh as the body 
of a winged insect is superior to that of the crawling 
worm with which it was formerly complicated; and 
that there we shall finally meet all of our loved ones, 
and progress with them in spiritual development and 
blessedness till we attain to the perfection for which 
God has created us. 

We believe it because we believe that we are children 
of God, and it is absolutely inconceivable that He 
should have created us for only a brief term of exist¬ 
ence. It is incredible that, having made us in His own 
image, with intellectual and spiritual capacities and 
yearnings whose fulfilment and satisfaction demand 
immortality, He has ordained that our existence shall 
come to an end when we have only just begun to 
develop our powers and to become what we are natu¬ 
rally fitted to be. There must be another life for us as 
children of God, in which to unfold our godlike quali¬ 
ties and to go on with the education and growth and 
development which we have barely begun on this side 
of the grave. Otherwise, our heavenly Father would 
be guilty of infanticide. He would be an unnatural, 
irrational Father, destroying His own offspring and 
violating the only good reason for bringing them into 
existence. That cannot be. God’s Fatherhood is a 
guaranty of the immortality of all men; and therefore 
we believe in it. 

We believe in it, furthermore, because we believe in 


BASIS OF OUR BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 45 


His justice, and justice demands a future life in which 
to correct the wrongs of this one. Tennyson says, 

“ There’s something in this world amiss 
Will be unriddled by-and-by”; 

And, oh, how many things there are that greatly need 
to be unriddled! How many mysteries to be explained; 
how much virtue that here is not fully rewarded; how 
much wickedness that here is not fully condemned! 
Good people suffer, innocent children often suffer, bad 
men defeat the plans of good men, and righteousness 
is often trampled under the feet of iniquity. If this 
world were all, and this life were all, justice would 
never be triumphant, and a large part of the human 
race would never get its deserts. But we believe that 
in the life to come both righteousness and unrighteous¬ 
ness will receive a just recompense, and that whatever 
is wrong will be overcome by the right. We believe 
that in that higher life the moral dissonances which 
occur in this state of existence will be resolved into a 
final and glorious harmony. We know not how, but 
we believe that God knows—because we believe in His 
wisdom, His love, and His justice. 

" In the corrupted currents of the world 
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice; 

And oft ’tis seen, the wicked prise itself 
Buys out the law. But ’tis not so above. 

There is no shuffling; there the action lies 
In his true nature; and we ourselves compelled, 

Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, 

To give in evidence.” 

The secret things will be revealed; the righteousness 
of the righteous will shine forth as the noonday; those 


46 BASIS OF OUR BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 


who have done iniquity will be ashamed of their sinful¬ 
ness ; evil will be conquered and banished from the uni¬ 
verse; and all souls will be brought into concord and 
blessedness. It must be so, to justify God’s dealings 
with us. 

But why do we thus believe in the justice of God, 
and why do we believe in His heavenly fatherhood? 
Why, but because of what Jesus has done for us? It 
is He Who has taught us to believe in God’s father¬ 
hood. It is He Who has taught us to believe in God’s 
justice. And it is He Who has revealed to us in the 
most positive manner the reality of that spirit world 
and the certainty of that higher life into which our 
souls will enter when we come to the end of our earthly 
career. 

He declared those great truths during the course of 
His ministry, and said that, to prove His truthfulness, 
He would arise from the dead. When His enemies 
asked Him for a sign of His authority, He said to 
them, “ Destroy this temple ”—His material body— 
“ and in three days I will raise it up ”; and again He 
said to them, “ I lay down my life that I may take it 
again. I have power to lay it down, and I have power 
to take it again.” To His disciples He said, “ The Son 
of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto 
the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death and 
shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock and to scourge 
and to crucify; and the third day he shall rise again.” 
“A little while,” said He, “ and ye shall not see me; 
and again a little while and ye shall see me.” And al¬ 
though they wondered what He meant by it, not sup¬ 
posing that such a thing as His resurrection was pos¬ 
sible, He fulfilled His prediction, and on the third day 
after His crucifixion reappeared in their midst in a 


BASIS OF OUR BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 47 

visible form, thereby proving beyond all question the 
fact of His Messiahship and the truth of His teachings 
That is why we observe Easter as a jubilant festival. 
And the fact that it is so observed throughout the en¬ 
tire Christian world is one of the many infallible proofs 
that the Biblical story of His resurrection was not a 
cunningly devised fable, but the statement of a won¬ 
derfully glorious truth,—just as our annual celebration 
of the Fourth of July is an evidence of the adoption of 
our national Declaration of Independence, or as our 
annual decoration of soldiers’ graves is one of the evi¬ 
dences of the great war in which, they laid down their 
lives. Had there been no declaration of independence 
by the American colonies, there would be no celebration 
of the Fourth of July. Had there been no civil war, 
there would be no annual decoration of soldiers’ graves 
in this country. Had there been no last supper of Jesus 
Christ and His disciples, such as the Bible describes, 
there would be no celebration of it by Christians of the 
present day. And had there been no visible resur¬ 
rection of Jesus Christ from the dead, there would be 
no celebration of Easter day, nor should we observe 
the Christian Sabbath on the first day of the week. 
The early Christians changed their Sabbath from the 
last day to the first day, and nothing but the resur¬ 
rection of Jesus Christ can account for it. Nor can 
anything else account for the change which took place 
in the feelings and the conduct of His little company 
of disciples within a few days of His crucifixion and 
burial or for the marvelous results which they pro¬ 
duced bv their ministry. When He was arrested and 
crucified, thev forsook Him and fled. They were ut¬ 
terly discouraged, and, as He had prophesied, they were 
“ scattered, every man to his own.” But, on the third 


48 BASIS OF OUR BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 


day thereafter, something suddenly delivered them 
from their state of dejection; something transformed 
them; something took away their cowardice; something 
overcame their selfishness; something filled their hearts 
with great gladness and hopefulness, and sent them 
forth to preach the gospel at the risk of their lives. 
They said that the change was caused by the resur¬ 
rection of Christ and His reappearance among them in 
bodily form; and their conduct clearly showed that they 
stated the truth. They could not have been mistaken 
about it, nor had they any possible motive to tell a 
falsehood about it. The number of occasions on which 
He revealed Himself, and the number of persons to 
whom He revealed Himself, together with His words 
and actions during the forty days before His final de¬ 
parture from them, precluded any possibility of hal¬ 
lucination or deception in regard to the matter, and 
furnished a chain of “ infallible proofs ” that He had 
kept His promise to come back in bodily form from 
the grave. 

Otherwise, as soon as His disciples began to preach 
that He had arisen from the grave and had reap¬ 
peared in their midst, His enemies would have dis¬ 
proved it by disinterring His body and re-nailing it to 
the cross. Their report that the disciples had stolen it 
was too absurd to deserve a moment’s credence from 
any one. 

No, it was not as a set of grave-robbers, nor as a set 
of self-deceived believers in a cunningly devised fable, 
that the early disciples went forth at the risk of their 
lives to preach the gospel of Christ. It was because 
God had begotten them again unto a living hope by the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It was 
because they knew Him and the power of His resur- 


BASIS OF OUR BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 49 


rection, and were inspired by that knowledge to carry 
out His commands. 

God grant that we also may have that knowledge, 
and may be inspired thereby to walk in newness of life. 
So shall we be “ strengthened with might in the inner 
man ” to meet our trials triumphantly, and to do our 
duty with cheerfulness as the years pass away; 

" Thus ever towards man's height of nobleness 
Striving, some new progression to contrive; 

Till, just as any other friend's, we press 
Death’s hand; and, having died, feel none the less 
How beautiful it is to be alive." 


V 

WILL CHRIST RETURN TO THIS WORLD? 


“ Then said Jesus unto his disciples, The Son of Man shall 
come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and then 
shall he reward every man according to his work. Verily I 
say unto you, There be some standing here which shall not 
taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in his 
Kingdom ^— Matt. 16 : 24 , 27 , 28 . 

Ik T O one can carefully read the New Testament 
without seeing that it often mentions a coming 
of Christ in addition to that which took place 
at His birth—a different sort of coming, which had 
not occurred when any part of the New Testament was 
written. That coming was repeatedly foretold by Him¬ 
self ; and it is very evident from their own statements 
that, after His death and resurrection, His disciples 
expected it. Indeed, hardly any subject is more fre¬ 
quently mentioned by them; and it is said that, either 
directly or indirectly, one verse in twenty-five of the 
whole New Testament refers to it. I have never veri¬ 
fied that statement; but certain it is that the New Testa¬ 
ment frequently mentions not only the original coming 
of Christ but also the coming to which He referred in 
the words of my text. 

In regard to His original coming there is very gen¬ 
eral agreement among the churches of Christendom. 
All Christians agree that, at the time of His birth, 
Jesus came in the flesh, in a visible, personal, human 
form. 

There is no such unanimity of opinion, however, in 

50 



WILL CHRIST RETURN TO THIS WORLD? 51 


regard to the coming which is mentioned in my texi. 
Christian people disagree as to the time and the manner 
of it. The most of them believe that it has not yet 
occurred, and that it will be a personal and visible 
return to this world. They believe that Jesus is coming 
back in a bodily form to set up His judgment throne on 
earth, for the purpose of punishing His enemies and 
rewarding His followers and establishing an order of 
things that will not pass away. Those who hold to that 
belief, however, do not agree as to the time when the 
event will occur. They are divided into two parties 
with reference to it, one of which is known as the pre- 
millennial and the other as the post-millennial. The 
pre-millennialists believe that Christ’s coming is to pre¬ 
cede a millennial period—a period of a thousand years, 
—during which He will personally reign on the earth,— 
and that it is likely to occur at any moment without any 
further warning of it. Whereas the post-millennialists 
believe that He is not to appear until after the millen¬ 
nium, which they think to be still in the far distant 
future. Both parties alike give a literal inteq>retation 
to what the Bible says about the manner of His coming 
and believe that it will be accompanied by a bodily 
resurrection and a final decisive judgment of all who 
have died; that the present heavens and earth will be 
utterly destroyed; and that a new universe will be 
created, in which a part of the human race, having been 
judged and approved, will be rewarded with everlasting 
happiness in heaven, while all of the others, having been 
judged and condemned, will be punished with everlast¬ 
ing torment in hell. 

But while such is the belief of a large number of 
people, there is a growing number who maintain that 
the coming which Christ foretold has already occurred, 


52 WILL CHRIST RETURN TO THIS WORLD? 


and that, instead of being a personal, bodily coming, it 
was a spiritual coming—a coming of His spiritual 
authority and influence into such a degree of acceptance 
among men as to make Him actually their spiritual 
Ruler or King. They maintain that, as He Himself 
said, it was His “ coming in his Kingdom,’’ which was 
practically the same thing as the coming of His King¬ 
dom, and that His promise that it should take place 
within that generation was fulfilled at the time of the 
destruction of Jerusalem, in the year 70 of our era, 
when the Kingdom was taken away from the people of 
Israel and given to the Christian Church, which then 
came into power as the chief exponent and representa¬ 
tive of God’s truth in this world. 

If you turn to the first verse of the ninth chapter of 
Mark, which is the parallel passage to that which I 
have taken as a text, you will notice that it reads in 
this way: “ Verily I say unto you, There be some of 
them that stand here which shall not taste of death till 
they have seen the Kingdom of God come with power.” 
Matthew says, “ Shall not taste death till they see the 
Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.” Evidently, 
according to these two statements, the coming of 
Christ in His Kingdom means exactly the same as 
the coming of God’s Kingdom. The expressions are 
mutually convertible, which shows that Christ’s com¬ 
ing does not mean necessarily His visible, bodily, 
personal coming. 

Not only when He uttered the words of my text, but 
on several other occasions, He said that His coming 
was to occur during that generation. He never even 
intimated that it was to be postponed for many centu¬ 
ries, nor did He ever speak of it as a bodily return to 
this world. He never called it a return, or a second 


WILL CHRIST RETURN TO THIS WORLD? 53 


coming, or a second advent, or a coming back, or a 
coming again. He called it His coming in His King¬ 
dom, in power and glory. The only instance in which 
He said that He was coming again was when He 
promised His disciples that after His crucifixion He 
would come back from the grave. That referred to 
His resurrection, not to His coming in His Kingdom. 
Of the latter He said to His disciples on a certain 
occasion, “ When they persecute you in this city, flee 
ye into another: for verily I say unto you, ye shall not 
have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man 
be come” [Matt. 10:23]. And when they said to 
Him, with reference to the destruction of Jerusalem, 
“ Tell us, when shall these things be, and what shall be 
the sign of thy coming and of the end of the age? ” 
[see the marginal rendering], His answer was, “ Verily, 
I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away till 
all of these things be fulfilled ”; and, after telling them 
of certain signs by which they might know when His 
coming was near, among which was the encompassing 
of Jerusalem by its enemies, He exhorted them to watch 
for it, lest they should be unprepared [Matt. 24; Luke 
25]. He would certainly not have told them to watch 
for an event which was not to take place till long after 
their death. 

After His resurrection, when He was questioned by 
Simon Peter as to what the apostle John should do. His 
answer was, “ If I will that he tarry till I come, what 
is that to thee? ” the implication plainly being that John 
was one of those of whom He had previously said that 
they should not taste of death until after His coming; 
and, as a matter of fact, John lived till long after the 
destruction of Jerusalem. Shortly before that catas¬ 
trophe, while he was living as an exile on the island of 


54 WILL CHRIST RETURN TO THIS WORLD? 


Patmos, he was told no less than five times that Christ 
was about to come quickly, and that the time was at 
hand [Rev. 3 : 11; 22: 7, 10, 12, 20]. 

In the face of such statements by the Saviour Him¬ 
self, how can any one suppose that when He spoke of 
His coming He referred to something which was not to 
happen for thousands of years? 

Or how can any one read the book of Acts, and the 
epistles of Paul and Peter and James and John, without 
seeing that all of the early disciples fully expected that 
Christ would come, in accordance with His promise, 
before the termination of that generation? They 
watched for His coming, as He had instructed them, 
and expected it from day to day. 

“ The time is short,” said St. Paul in his first epistle 
to the Corinthians [I Cor. 7:29]. To the Philippians 
he wrote, “ The Lord is at hand ” [Phil. 4:5]; and to 
the Thessalonians, “ For this we say unto you by the 
word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain 
unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent (pre¬ 
cede) them which are asleep ” [I Thess. 4:15]. “ The 
coming of the Lord draweth nigh,” said St. James; 
and, again, “ Behold, the Judge standeth before the 
door ” [Jas. 5 : 8, 9]. St. Peter, in his first epistle, de¬ 
clared that the end of all things was at hand [I Pet. 
4:7]. And St. John, in his first epistle, said “ Little 
children, it is the last time [I John 2: 18]. Because 
they believed that the coming of the Lord was so nigh, 
the apostles exhorted their fellow Christians to be 
sober, and watchful, and patient, and cheerful, dis¬ 
missing all anxiety about worldly affairs. Paul even 
advised unmarried people to remain unmarried on that 
account. He argued that it was best for them not to 
involve themselves in domestic responsibilities, because 


WILL CHRIST RETURN TO THIS WORLD? 55 

everything was to be so soon and so thoroughly 
changed [I Cor. 7]. 

Were they wrong in assuming that the promised 
coming of Christ was so soon to occur? How could 
they have failed to think so in view of what He Him¬ 
self had said to them? He had left them no option in 
regard to that matter. If they believed His explicit 
statements as to the time of His coming, they could not 
do otherwise than to expect it to occur in their lifetime. 

And, in truth, it actually did take place before that 
generation had come to an end. Jesus came in His 
Kingdom when Jerusalem was destroyed, and the 
Mosaic dispensation was brought to an end, and the 
Christian dispensation took its place in the world. He 
came at that time, not in bodily form, but in spiritual 
power, into a position of increasing influence, by virtue 
of which He is now acknowledged as the Messiah by a 
large part of the world. When He predicted His com¬ 
ing in power and glory as the ruler of a Messianic 
Kingdom, He was comparatively unknown, and but 
few people believed in Him. He was poor and despised 
and about to be crucified, and to those who rejected 
Him His prophecy must have seemed like the talk of a 
crazy man. But history has justified it. His Kingdom 
has come, and He has come in His Kingdom, which is 
already far greater than that of King Solomon or of 
any of the Roman Emperors. You and I, as Chris¬ 
tian believers, are among the trophies of His coming, 
helping millions of others to form the unparalleled 
triumphal procession which accompanies His progress 
to greater victories still. 

Such is the only interpretation of His coming which 
corresponds with the facts of history and with His own 
language concerning it. 


66 WILL CHRIST RETURN TO THIS WORLD? 


But when these statements are advanced, they are 
met with the statement that His coming was so de¬ 
scribed as to disprove the supposition that it has already 
occurred. For it is said that He promised to come not 
only in power and glory, but in the clouds of heaven, 
accompanied by angels; and that He declared that 
before His coming the sun should be darkened, and the 
moon should not give its light, and the stars should 
fall from the sky. And, furthermore, it is said that, 
at the time of His ascension, an angel told His disciples 
that He would come again in like manner as they had 
seen Him depart from them; and that Paul told the 
Thessalonians that the dead in Christ should rise first, 
and that those who remained alive would be caught up 
together with them to meet Him in the clouds; and 
that Peter said that in the day of the Lord the heavens 
would pass away with a great noise, and that the earth 
and its contents would be burned up. 

It is true that the Bible contains such statements. 
And, therefore, notwithstanding what it says as to the 
time of His coming, many people contend that He has 
not yet come as He promised to, and are still expecting 
Him to come in that particular way. 

How shall we explain the apparent contradiction 
between what the Bible says as to the time of His 
coming and the manner of His coming and the fact 
that He has not come in that particular way ? 

The only way of explaining it is by assuming one of 
two things : either that Jesus was mistaken as to the 
time of His coming, or that the disciples were mistaken 
as to the manner of His coming. The first is incred¬ 
ible. Jesus could not possibly have made such a mis¬ 
take. But the disciples might easily have mistaken His 
meaning; and they evidently did so—not as to the time, 


WILL CHRIST RETURN TO THIS WORLD? 57 

but as to the manner of His coming. Nor was that the 
only thing, by any means, concerning which they mis¬ 
took His meaning. He often had occasion to correct 
their mistakes and to speak of their slowness to under¬ 
stand what He said. 

When He warned them against the leaven of the 
Pharisees and the Sadducees, they took His language 
literally and supposed that He was speaking about 
loaves of bread. When He said to them, after His 
conversation with the Samaritan woman, “ I have meat 
to eat that ye know not of,” they again supposed that 
he was speaking of material food. When He said to 
them, on the eve of His crucifixion, “ Whither I go, 
ye cannot come,” and “ A little while, and ye shall not 
see me; and again, a little while, and ye shall see me,” 
they were mystified and wondered what He was talking 
about, although He had repeatedly told them of His 
approaching death and resurrection. And when, after 
His resurrection, He conversed with two of them whom 
he accompanied as they went to Emmaus, they showed 
such dullness of comprehension that it impelled Him to 
say to them, “ O foolish men, and slow of heart to 
believe all that the prophets have spoken! Behooved 
it not the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into 

his glory? ” 

What wonder, then, that they failed to understand 
Him as to the manner of His coming, especially as 
what He said about it was principally quoted from the 
Old Testament prophecies. He applied those ancient 
prophecies to His own spiritual coming as He applied 
a prophetic assertion of Malachi to the preliminary 
coming of John the Baptist; and His language was not 
meant to be taken literally in either case. 

The Jewish people expected that before the coming 


58 WILL CHRIST RETURN TO THIS WORLD? 


of the Messiah, the prophet Elijah would return to this 
world, and Jesus told them that Elijah had already 
arrived, meaning that John the Baptist had shown the 
spirit of Elijah and had spiritually fulfilled the expec¬ 
tation concerning him. And so when He said that at 
the time of His coming the sun should be darkened and 
the moon should not give its light, and the stars should 
fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens should 
be shaken, He was using figurative language taken 
from the prophecy of Joel, who applied it to a national 
calamity which occurred in His own time [Joel 2: 10, 
11, 30, 31]. Jesus used it with reference to the greater 
calamity which occurred at the time when Jerusalem 
was destroyed, as He had distinctly foretold. Thous¬ 
ands upon thousands of the Jewish people were killed, 
and the rest of them were carried into foreign captivity, 
and the Judaic dispensation was brought to an end. To 
the Jewish nation, figuratively speaking, the sun was 
then darkened, the stars did then fall, and the heavens 
were then shaken. Indeed, its sun is still darkened, its 
star has not yet risen again, and its heavens have not 
yet ceased to tremble. As Jesus had predicted, the 
Jewish nation was then cast into outer darkness, which 
has not yet fully passed away. 

As for the statement of the angel on the day of His 
ascension, that He would come in like manner as the 
disciples had seen Him depart from, them, the Greek 
expression which our translators have rendered “ in like 
manner as ” would have been better rendered by the 
single word “ as.” It is really so rendered in the saying 
of Jesus, “ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the 
prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how 
often would I have gathered thy children together as a 
hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye 


WILL CHRIST RETURN TO THIS WORLD? 59 

would not” [Luke 13:34]. He evidently did not 
mean that He would have gathered the people of 
Jerusalem together in precisely the same manner as a 
hen gathers her chickens under her wings; nor need 
we suppose that the angel meant that He would return 
to this world in precisely the same manner in which He 
departed from it. The angel’s language had presum¬ 
ably no different meaning from that of Jesus Himself 
when He told His disciples that, before the termination 
of that generation, they should “ see the Son of Man 
coming in a cloud with power and great glory ’ [Luke 
21:27,32]. 

The disciples were not mistaken as to the time of His 
coming; and their mistake as to the manner of it may 
have been providential. That was the opinion of the 
Rev. Frederick W. Robertson, the distinguished Eng¬ 
lish clergyman, than whom there have been but few, if 
any, more competent interpreters of Biblical history. 
Said he, “ The apostles lived in anticipation of an im¬ 
mediate end of the world, no doubt; but I cannot see 
that this, on the whole, was anything but good. It was 
this which drew the Christians so closely together— 
made their union so remarkable, and starded the world, 
to which, otherwise, the new religion would have ap¬ 
peared merely a Philosophy, and not a Life. Besides, 
are we sure that aught less strong than this hope could 
have detached men so instantly and entirely from the 
habits of long sin; or that, on natural principles and 
without a miracle, even the apostles could have been in¬ 
duced to crowd so much superhuman energy into so 
small a compass ? ” 

However that may be, Jesus has come as He said he 
would. He has come in power and glory. He has 
come in His Kingdom. And never before was His 


60 WILL CHRIST RETURN TO THIS WORLD? 

Kingdom extending so rapidly, or His power and glory 
being so conspicuously displayed, as at this very day. 
During the last century more people have been con¬ 
verted to the Christian religion than were converted 
during the first ten centuries. At the end of the first 
century, there were about 500,000 Christians ; at the 
end of the second century, about 2,000,000; at the end 
of the tenth century, about 50,000,000; at the end of 
the eighteenth century, about 200,000,000; and at the 
end of the nineteenth century, about 400,000,000. 

Ah, yes, “ our eyes have seen the glory of the coming 
of the Lord,” and the next generation will behold even 
more of it. For Christ is in the world today, judging 
it and steadily extending His sway. There is no need 
of His coming back to it in a bodily form, and there is 
no likelihood of His doing so. His spiritual presence 
and influence are sufficient for His purpose; and our 
privilege, as well as our duty, is to co-operate with Him 
in extending His Kingdom, so as to hasten the time 
when in His name every knee shall bow, and every 
tongue shall confess His Lordship, to the glory of God. 


VI 

THE TRIUMPHAL PROGRESS OF CHRIST 

" And when they came nigh to Jerusalem, unto Bethphage 
and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, he sendeth forth two 
of his disciples, and saith unto them. Go your ivay into the 
village over against you: and as soon as ye be entered into 
it, ye shall find a colt tied, whereon never man sat; loose 
him and bring him. And if any man say unto you, Why do 
ye this? say ye that the Lord hath need of him; and straight¬ 
way he will send him hither. 

<( And they went their way, and found the colt tied by the 
door without, in a place where two ways met; and they loose 
him. And certain of them that stood there said unto them, 
What do ye, loosing the colt? And they said unto them even 
as Jesus had commanded them, and they let them go. 

“ And they brought the colt to Jesus, and cast their gar¬ 
ments on him; and he sat upon him. 

“ And many spread their garments in the way; and others 
cut down branches off the trees, and strewed them in the 
way. And they that went before, and they that followed, 
cried, saying, Hosanna: Blessed is he that cometh in the 
name of the Lord .”— Mark ii: 1-9. 

I N order to understand the full significance of this 
incident, we must turn to the Old Testament, 
where, in the ninth and tenth verses of the ninth 
chapter of Zechariah, we find the following language: 
“ Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O 
daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto 
thee: he is just and having salvation; lowly, and riding 
upon an ass, even upon a colt the foal of an ass. And 
I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse 
from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off; and 

61 


62 THE TRIUMPHAL PROGRESS OF CHRIST 


he shall speak peace unto the nations; and his dominion 
shall be from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends 
of the earth.” 

That prophecy was written about five hundred 
years before Jesus was born, at a time when the 
Israelites had no king of their own, but were subject 
to the King of Babylon. They had only recently 
returned from their Babylonian captivity, and were 
living in an oppressed and impoverished condition, 
surrounded by powerful nations that constantly threat¬ 
ened them. But the prophet, with inspired vision, 
looking down the course of time, beheld the coming 
of a person who should be not only the King of 
Israel but the rightful ruler of the world. He beheld 
Him riding onward to universal dominion, not, like 
other kings, on a caparisoned war-horse, but seated 
on an ass’s colt, in token of His peaceful character and 
the quietness and blessedness which would attend on 
His reign. 

For some hundreds of years that prediction had been 
regarded by the people of Israel as having a distinctly 
Messianic significance. It was one of the principal pas¬ 
sages on which they based their expectation that a 
Messiah would come. 

So, when Jesus was ready to declare His Messiah- 
ship and to have the whole nation understand what He 
claimed, He very naturally took the method which is 
described in my text. He could not possibly have taken 
a more significant means. 

Until then He had not publicly declared His Mes- 
siahship, lest He should precipitate a crisis before the 
right time. He had been traveling about through Judea 
and Galilee, preaching the gospel and doing such won¬ 
derful works that many people were thinking that He 


THE TRIUMPHAL PROGRESS OF CHRIST 63 

might be the Messiah; but He had refrained from ex¬ 
plicitly claiming to be. 

At last, however, the time had come for Him to de¬ 
clare Himself openly; and for that purpose He went 
up to Jerusalem, with His disciples, when, owing to the 
celebration of the feast of the passover, the city was 
thronged with pilgrims from all over the world. Hav¬ 
ing increased the popular excitement by raising Lazarus 
from the grave, He entered the city in the manner 
which is described in my text, amid the acclamations of 
a jubilant multitude who, immediately perceiving the 
significance of His action, saluted Him with hosannas 
as the long-expected Messiah, using a pertinent quota¬ 
tion from one of the psalms. 

In so doing they were justified, although they mis¬ 
took the true nature of His Messiahship and of the 
Kingdom which He was about to establish on earth. 
For He was really the Messiah. He claimed nothing 
less; and during the last nineteen centuries history has 
been proving the truth of His claim. For a few days 
it was seemingly falsified by His arrest and crucifixion, 
and the hopes of His disciples were dashed to the 
ground. But He had foreseen all of that, and had 
foretold it to His disciples, and had also told them that 
it was necessary for the success of His mission. Ex¬ 
cept a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it 
abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much 
fruit,” said He; and even so it has proved. Ever since 
His crucifixion He has been gaining new followers, and 
extending His dominion, and giving an increase of 
blessedness wherever His gospel has been preached 
among men. The stone which the builders rejected has 
become the head of the corner. Caesar has passed 
away; the Roman Empire has passed away; the Roman 


64 THE TRIUMPHAL PROGRESS OF CEIRIST 


religion has passed away; the gods of the Pantheon are 
worshiped no more; but the dominion of Jesus has not 
passed away. “ With his pierced hands he has lifted 
empires off their hinges, turned the stream of history 
from its channels, and still governs the ages.” His 
divine right to rule has been fully established; and, 
year after year, He who rode into the city of Jerusa¬ 
lem, seated on an ass’s colt in fulfilment of Zechariah’s 
prophecy, is riding steadily onward to the universal 
dominion which that prophecy indicates. Never have 
any doubt of it. 

And never overlook the fact that, as He said to 
Pontius Pilate, His Kingdom is not of this world. It 
is in the world and will finally include the world, but it 
is not of the world as to its origin or its character. 
Heavenly in its origin, it is spiritual in character and 
uses only spiritual and heavenly means. It cannot con¬ 
sistently do otherwise. The Jewish people perversely 
lost sight of that fact, notwithstanding what their 
prophets had said in regard to it. They desired and 
expected a temporal King; and, if Jesus would have 
permitted them, they would have enthroned Him as 
such. On one occasion, when He had miraculously fed 
a great multitude, they endeavoured to force such a 
Kingship upon Him; and when He entered Jerusalem, 
seated on an ass’s colt, if He would have exchanged the 
colt for a war-horse, He could not only have avoided 
the impending crucifixion, but could have put Himself 
immediately at the head of an army and have been 
accepted by the nation as its liberator and King. But 
He could not have done so without being false to His 
mission. 

We are told that, after His resurrection, while He 
was walking to Emmaus with two of His disciples, He 


THE TRIUMPHAL PROGRESS OF CHRIST 65 


expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things con¬ 
cerning Himself, and showed them therefrom that it 
was necessary that He should suffer at the hands of His 
enemies in order to conquer and govern the world. 
For the weapons of His warfare were not carnal but 
spiritual. The methods by which He was to gain His 
victories were not belligerent but peaceful. And not 
until those methods are everywhere adopted, super¬ 
seding the old methods of vindictiveness and blood¬ 
shed, and 


“ Bach man finds his own in all men’s good, 

And all men work in noble brotherhood” 

will His Kingdom be completed and His mission 
fulfilled. 

God hasten the day. Alas, it is still afar off. “ We 
see not yet all things put under him ”; and we shall not 
see them put under Him until we and all other men 
have become His disciples not only in name but in deed 
and in truth. For “ while Christ alone can save the 
world, Christ cannot save the world alone.” He needs 
followers and helpers, and not merely such as bestrewed 
His pathway and saluted Him with hosannas when He 
rode into Jerusalem, but such as believe in Him suf¬ 
ficiently to obey Him in everything and, if need be, to 
die for Him. 

There is somewhere a picture of a roadway in India, 
across which there are lying, side by side, and close 
together, a large number of people, while a man who is 
on horseback rides deliberately over them, his horse 
necessarily stepping on some of them. They represent 
a religious sect among the people of India, and the 
whole picture represents a religious ceremony in which 


66 THE TRIUMPHAL PROGRESS OF CHRIST 


the people of that sect participate, supposing that by 
thus making a living roadway for the progress of their 
great high priest they are performing a highly meri¬ 
torious action, and that if any of them is seriously 
injured by it he will be rewarded with everlasting bless¬ 
edness. We call that ceremony a superstition, and are 
justified in doing so; but, nevertheless, it suggests a 
great truth—that the best roadway for the progress of 
any spiritual ruler, as he goes forth on a mission of 
truth and salvation, is constituted of human beings 
who are devoted both to him and to the cause which 
he serves. 

Is not that the only kind of a roadway by which 
Jesus can advance to His prophesied victory? How 
can He obtain world-wide dominion—how can He 
make an end of sin and bring in universal righteous¬ 
ness—unless we thus become, as it were, His stepping 
stones ? How else shall He finally subdue all things to 
Himself, and through Himself to the Father, that God 
may at last be all in all ? Other way there is none; and 
if we wish Him to be triumphant, we should assist Him 
by thus devoting ourselves to His service, remembering 
His significant saying, that whosoever will lose his life 
for His sake shall find it unto life eternal. 

One way of assisting Him is by giving verbal testi¬ 
mony to our faith in His Messiahship, acknowledging 
Him openly as our Saviour and Lord—emulating the 
disciples who hailed Him with hosannas on the occasion 
to which my text refers. That is the least that we can 
do, and we ought not to refrain from it. No devotion 
to Him is sufficiently shown without utterance. “ Let 
the redeemed of the Lord say so,” and let those 
who believe in Jesus say so. Let them, confess Him 
before their fellowmen—not vaingloriously, not sancti- 


THE TRIUMPHAL PROGRESS OF CHRIST 67 


moniously, nor hypocritically, nor time-servingly, but 
humbly, gladly, and honestly. “ With the heart man 
believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth con¬ 
fession is made unto salvation.” It strengthens the 
faith of those who make it, and tends to beget faith in 
other people. It gratifies the Saviour’s heart, and helps 
to prepare His way before Him. 

But words alone will not suffice. We must not only 
call Him Lord and Master, but put His precepts into 
practice, presenting ourselves as living sacrifices for 
the success of His cause. 

O, how the early martyrs bestrewed His pathway 
when they went forth, for His sake, to the rack, and 
the stake, and the sword, and the dungeon, and suffered 
agonizing deaths, without wavering for an instant in 
their steadfast devotion, but dying triumphantly with 
His name on their lips! Every drop of blood which 
they uncomplainingly shed for him, and every pain 
which they bore for Him, gave witness to His saving 
power and helped to prepare the way for His universal 
dominion. And equally so, at the present time, whoso¬ 
ever willingly bears a cross for Him or endures perse¬ 
cution for the sake of His word, or endeavours to live 
in all respects in accordance with His teachings, is 
helping to make a highway for Him, whereon He may 
ride to His ultimate victory. 

It costs something, undoubtedly, to live such a life 
as His service demands. But alas for him who un¬ 
gratefully and selfishly refuses! For, oh, how little 
we can do for Him in comparison with what He has 
done for us! How little we can give to Him in com¬ 
parison with what He has given to us! 

Some years before our civil war, a coloured man who 
had been a slave on a southern plantation was liberated 


68 THE TRIUMPHAL PROGRESS OF CHRIST 


by his master, who thenceforth paid him for his serv¬ 
ices. As time went on, he saved his earnings; but his 
employer, after some years, met with financial misfor¬ 
tune and was obliged to sell all of his property at 
auction. When the coloured man heard that the sale 
was advertised, he went to his former master with the 
money which he had saved and requested him to 
count it. 

“ Jerry,” said the gentleman, when he had counted 
the money, “ you’ve got two hundred and fifty dollars.” 

“ Marse Jeems,” said the coloured man, “ who I 
b’long to ’fore I’se free? ” 

“ You belonged to me, Jerry,” was the answer. 

“ Marse Jeems, who sot me free? ” said Jerry. 

“ Why, I did,” said the gentleman. 

Whereupon the faithful servant said, “ Marse Jeems, 
all I is, and all I has, is youm. Take de money, an 
sabe de ole house.” 

The white man would not take the money, but he 
accepted the devotion which prompted the offer of it; 
and, oh, how gratifying the offer must have been to 
his soul! 

But how much reason had that poor freedman for 
being devoted to the gentleman who had given him his 
freedom in comparison with what we have for being 
devoted to Christ? What should we be, were it not 
for Him? Who lias given us the intellectual and spir¬ 
itual liberty in which we rejoice every day of our 
lives ? Why are we not in the same condition as those 
millions of people who are still under bondage to gross 
superstitions, not knowing that God is their heavenly 
Father, and living in spiritual darkness all the days of 
their lives? Our freedom is owing to what Jesus has 
done for us. He is our redeemer and our spiritual 


THE TRIUMPHAL PROGRESS OF CHRIST 69 

King. Ought we not, then, gladly to do what we can 
for Him? Shall we not gratefully and lovingly say to 
Him, Take all that we have, and all that we are; take 
us and use us in the interests of Thy Kingdom, that 
Thy way may be known upon the earth, Thy saving 
health among all nations ? 


VII 

THE EXTERMINATION OF EVIL 


“ Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted 
shall he rooted up .”— Matt. 15: 13. 

NDER the earth’s surface, so richly diversified, 



there is a rocky formation composed of vari¬ 


ous strata; and while the most of that forma¬ 
tion is hidden from view, some of it comes to the 
surface in numerous places and occasionally rises to a 
mountainous altitude. Such outcroppings may ap¬ 
parently have no connection; but they are united under¬ 
ground as components of a system that encircles the 


world. 


Somewhat similarly the various parts of the Bible 
are united by the great underlying truths which belong 
to its structure. Often coming to view, they are oc¬ 
casionally manifested with a grandeur of expression 
which is nowhere else equalled in the literature of 
mankind. 

One of those expressions occurs in my text. Ap¬ 
parently standing by itself, it is connected as to its 
significance with numerous similar expressions which 
belong to the same great vein of truth, extending 
through the Bible from beginning to end. In fact, it 
is an expression of the everlasting principle which con¬ 
stitutes the very substratum of the Bible—viz., the sov¬ 
ereignty of God, and the certainty that His will shall 
prevail universally. That principle is the bed-rock of 


70 


THE EXTERMINATION OF EVIL 


71 


both the Old and the New Testament; it underlies both 
the Judaic and the Christian religion. 

The first indication of it is in the third chapter of 
Genesis, where there is a prophecy of enmity between 
mankind and the serpent, and of the coming of a time 
when the serpent’s head shall be 1 bruised—which means 
nothing less than the destruction of evil so far as its 
relation to mankind is concerned. 

Further along, in the book of Daniel, there is a 
prophecy which is set forth under the figure of a vis¬ 
ion—the vision of a stone which was cut out without 
hands, and which smote a great image till it ground it 
into powder which the wind drove away; after which 
the stone grew till it became a great mountain that 
filled the whole earth. The interpretation of that 
vision was that God was about to establish a kingdom 
which, notwithstanding its apparently feeble beginning, 
would overcome all opposition and finally be dominant 
throughout the whole world. 

When Jesus began His ministry, He taught His dis¬ 
ciples to pray “ Thy Kingdom come ”—the Kingdom 
which was foretold in the teachings of the prophets, the 
Kingdom which is opposed to all of the forces of un¬ 
righteousness, and of whose final complete triumph St. 
John had a vision when he saw, as it were, a door 
opened in heaven and beheld the whole creation joy¬ 
fully worshiping God. That is what we really pray 
for, if we use the words with their full significance, 
when we say “ Thy Kingdom come.” We pray for the 
utter destruction of evil. We pray that whatever is 
opposed to God’s Kingdom may be expelled from the 
universe, as the dust into which the great image was 
powdered was driven away by the wind, and that its 
place may be taken by that heavenly Kingdom which is 


72 


THE EXTERMINATION OF EVIL 


“ righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” 
And my text is a declaration by the Saviour Himself 
that what we thus pray for shall sometime be realized. 
In figurative language, like that of the prophets, he 
foretold the extinction of whatsoever is not in accord 
with God’s will. 

The statement was called forth by the enmity of the 
Pharisees, who complained that His disciples ate bread 
without washing their hands, and that by so doing they 
transgressed the traditions of the elders. In answer to 
their criticism, He charged them with transgressing the 
commandments of God, and with making His word of 
no effect by their unreasonable traditions. And it was 
with particular reference to those foolish traditions 
that He uttered the great truth which is set forth 
in my text. He plainly implied that Pharisaism is 
doomed to extinction, because it is not in accord with 
God’s will. But He did not limit the application of His 
words to that matter. On the contrary, He made the 
statement so broad and so sweeping that it applies to 
everything which conflicts with the purpose of God. 
Pharisaism was only one of a great many such things, 
all of which must be destroyed for exactly the same 
reason. All doctrines and traditions and customs and 
institutions which are not divinely ordained must pass 
out of existence, that God’s will may be done in all 
parts of the universe as it is now being done by the 
angels on high. 

That is why Jesus came into this world. That is 
what he lived and died for—to exterminate evil in all 
of its phases. “ For this purpose,” says the Scripture, 
“the Son of God was manifested, that He might 
destroy the works of the devil ”; and again, “ Foras¬ 
much, then, as the children are partakers of flesh and 


THE EXTERMINATION OF EVIL 


73 


blood, he also likewise partook of the same, that 
through death he might destroy him that had the power 
of death, that is, the devil.” Not only the works of the 
devil, but the very principle of evil which is personified 
under the name of the devil, and from which all actual 
evil comes, will be abolished when the mission of Christ 
is fulfilled. 

In accordance with that divine purpose and plan, 
many things which once flourished have already been 
uprooted and brought to an end. They have passed 
out of existence, no more to return. Where now are 
the false religions which flourished among the Gentiles 
before the advent of Christ? Where is the ancient 
Egyptian religion, with its esoteric mysteries and its 
worship of beasts? Where is the ancient Phenician 
religion, with its horrible worship of Moloch? Where 
is the ancient religion of the Greeks and the Romans, 
with its worship of the mythical gods of Olympus and 
its licentious rites and ceremonies ? Where is the wor¬ 
ship of Diana of Ephesus? Where is the ancient 
Druidical religion, or that of the old Germanic and 
Scandinavian nations? Gone forever, uprooted and 
exterminated, because they were not of God’s planting 
and were not in agreement with the truth of His word. 

Gone also are many of the horrible customs which 
prevailed in connection with those by-gone religions. 
Gone are the gladiatorial shows, in which multitudes 
of human beings were forced to slaughter one another 
for the amusement of the Roman populace. Gone is 
the ancient custom of sacking cities in warfare, and of 
massacring their inhabitants. Gone is the practice of 
carrying prisoners of war into slavery. Gone is the 
terrible custom of burying people alive, either as a 
punishment for their offences or as a sacrifice to the 


74 


THE EXTERMINATION OF EVIL 


gods. Gone is the utterly selfish custom of abandoning 
unwelcome children, to die of starvation or to be de¬ 
voured by beasts. Uprooted and exterminated are all 
of those evils. And with them have gone most of the 
nations that practiced them. Every one of the king¬ 
doms which were represented by the different parts of 
the image which is mentioned in the book of Daniel 
has long since disappeared from the face of the earth. 
The Roman Empire itself, which once appeared to be 
impregnable, is a thing of the past; and where Nero’s 
golden house once stood the antiquarian now searches 
for some remains of its grandeur. 

For the same reason, many things of more recent 
origin have also been exterminated. The Inquisition 
has gone; the feudal system has gone; slavery has gone 
in every civilized country; and the principles of true 
democracy, based on the fact of human brotherhood, 
are gaining acceptance throughout the whole world. 

Many great evils and innumerable lesser ones still 
remain, sad to say; but, one and all, they must go, like 
those- which have already passed out of existence. 
Like the ancient religions which opposed Christianity, 
so must vanish all false theologies and false systems of 
philosophy in regard to God and mankind. Like the 
oppressive traditions of the Scribes and the Pharisees, 
so must disappear all bigotry in regard to religious 
ideas and observances. As slavery has been abolished, 
so must it be with the traffic in intoxicants, and with 
what is called the social evil, and with the practice of 
granting improper divorces, and with the cruelty of 
obliging little children to labour at tasks which inter¬ 
fere with their normal development, and with the 
tyranny and injustice of great corporations, and with 
the selfish struggle for supremacy between employers 


THE EXTERMINATION OF EVIL 


75 


and employees, and with all narrow-minded partisan¬ 
ship and corruption in politics, and with all jealousies 
and intriguings and warfare between nations. Those 
things are decidedly not of God’s planting, and they 
must all pass away. Their days are surely numbered, 
and God knows when every one of them will come to 
an end. 

“ Creeds, empires, systems, rot with age, 

But the great people's ever youthful! 

And it shall write the future page 
To our humanity more truthful. 

“ The world shall not forever bow 

To things which mock God's own endeavour. 

3 Tis nearer than they wot of now, 

When flowers shall wreathe the sword forever! 

'Tis coming! Yes, 'tis coming!" 

And, finally, sin itself will cease. Sin, the cause of 
all other evils, the root from which they all proceed, 
will be uprooted and destroyed. The doctrine of ever¬ 
lasting sin is directly opposed to the truth of my text. 
It can be logically defended only by assuming that sin 
is something which our heavenly Father has planted 
and which He intends to perpetuate. But who can 
rationally make such a monstrous assumption ? 

No, sin is not something which our heavenly Father 
Jias planted. It is something which He abominates. 
It is a poisonous and detestable weed in His garden, 
and it is to be destroyed, root and branch, wheresoever 
it grows. For the power that makes for righteousness 
is not confined to this world, and its operations are not 
confined to this side of the grave. 

The belief of some people, that, instead of being 
exterminated, sin is finally to be confined to one part 


76 


THE EXTERMINATION OF EVIL 


of the universe, segregated forever in a place which is 
called hell, does not agree with God’s word, nor does it 
consist with the perfection of His heavenly govern¬ 
ment. That unreasonable belief is itself one of the 
things to be rooted up and destroyed. Already it is 
showing symptoms of passing away. Less and less it 
is being believed by mankind, and more and more 
rapidly it is being superseded by a blessed faith in the 
final salvation of all. 

But what then? If the doctrine of endless sin is not 
a thing of God’s planting, and is to be rooted out of 
the minds of mankind, shall we continue in sin while 
we live in this world, and leave its final extinction to 
the power of God? If all evil is to be destroyed, have 
we nothing to do but to wait for God to destroy it ? 

To adopt that conclusion is to show a sad lack of 
correct understanding. Not so did St. Paul. On the 
contrary, in the fifteenth chapter of his first epistle to 
the Corinthians, after setting forth the final destruction 
of evil and the ultimate harmony of all things with 
God, he concluded by saying, “ Therefore, my beloved 
brethren, be ye steadfast, immovable, always abounding 
in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that 
your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” That is good 
reasoning, especially when we bear in mind that, as the 
same apostle elsewhere says, God works in us to will 
and to do of His good pleasure, and that, in order to be 
saved, we must work out our salvation in accordance 
with His all-wise and unchangeable plan. We should 
remember that, in carrying out His purposes in regard 
to mankind, God makes use of human agencies. He 
works with us, and we must therefore work with Him, 
to bring the desired end to pass. He alone will never 
abolish the evils which exist among men. But, just as 


THE EXTERMINATION OF EVIL 77 

He has already destroyed many evils by means of the 
human agencies which history mentions, He will finally 
destroy all others; and the sooner and the more earn¬ 
estly we co-operate with Him, the sooner they will be 
destroyed. 

In the glorious truth which my text sets forth there 
is a powerful incentive for us, not to be idle or careless 
or sinful, but to be active and hopeful in the work of 
uprooting all things that are evil. If God had or¬ 
dained that they should not be uprooted, it would be' 
utterly useless for us to try to get rid of them. But 
now we have no possible excuse for not trying. For 
we know that they ought to be uprooted, that God 
wishes them to be uprooted, that they can be uprooted, 
and that the only way of doing it is by means of our 
own efforts, inspired and assisted and made successful 
by Him. 

Until comparatively recent times, certain diseases 
were regarded as visitations of God. They were at¬ 
tributed to His wrath or to His inscrutable purposes, 
and no intelligent effort was made to get rid of them. 
But we now understand that they are caused by our 
violation of certain physical laws, and that in order to 
get rid of them it is only necessary for us to conform 
to those laws. And so we have already nearly extermi¬ 
nated some of them, which formerly swept away many 
thousands of people; and there is reason to hope that 
before long we shall get rid of some more of them. 
We can finally get rid of all of them by unitedly work¬ 
ing with God to that end. And in the same spirit we 
should work against all sorts of evil, never resting 
from opposing them till they are wholly destroyed. 
To compromise with them, to make any sort of terms 
with them which will permit their continuance, is to 


78 


THE EXTERMINATION OF EVIL 


fall short of our duty as children of God. Such thing's 
should be exterminated, and it is both our duty and our 
privilege to be God’s fellow-labourers in bringing about 
their extinction at the earliest possible day. 

No other religion is so well fitted to inspire people 
for such a conflict with evil as that which includes a 
belief in universal salvation. If Universalists are not 
in the forefront of that conflict, it is not because of 
their faith, but because they are not living up to it. 

Thank God for a religion so comforting and inspir¬ 
ing! Thank God for its splendid optimism! Blessed 
be His name for the assurance which He has given us 
that every plant which He hath not planted shall be 
rooted up and destroyed. In that assurance let us 
labour, always abounding in the work of the Lord, and 
looking steadfastly forward to the grand consumma¬ 
tion when all souls shall be in harmony with Him who 
created them. 

“And angelic hosts shall cry, 

Holy, holy Lord, Most High, 

Thou art All in All.” 


VIIJ 

THE STORY OF JONAH 

“And, the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second 
time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and 
preach unto it the preaching that I hid thee ”— Jonah 3: 1, 2. 

I N the ninth chapter of the book of Judges it is said 
that, on a certain occasion, the trees went forth to 
choose a king, and that, after the olive tree and 
the fig tree and the vine had declined, the bramble ac¬ 
cepted the position and issued its edicts accordingly. 
The story is related as if it were true. It is not said to 
be an allegory, a myth, or a parable. But every one 
who reads it understands that it is a parable, because 
of the internal evidence, and because a literal interpre¬ 
tation of it would reduce it to absurdity. 

Strangely enough, however, many people who are 
intelligent in regard to most matters, and who under¬ 
stand that the story of the trees is a parable, do not 
perceive that the story of Jonah is an allegory. They 
assume that, because it is related as if it were true, it 
was intended by its author to be so understood, not¬ 
withstanding the absurdities which are involved in that 
theory. Taken in that way, the story is a serious ob¬ 
stacle to the faith of some people, while it signally 
serves the purpose of those who scoff at the Bible. 
Whereas, if it be taken as its author intended, it is full 
of literary beauty and religious instructiveness. 

Those people who contend that it is literally true 
base their argument, to a great extent, on Christ’s 

79 


80 THE STORY OF JONAH 

statement to the Pharisees, that no sign should be given 
to that generation excepting the sign of the prophet 
Jonah. According to Luke’s account, He said, “ For 
even as Jonah became a sign unto the Ninevites, so 
shall the Son of Man be to this generation. . . . The 
men of Nineveh shall rise up in the judgment with this 
generation, and shall condemn it; for they repented at 
the preaching of Jonah; and, behold, a greater than 
Jonah is here” [Luke 11:29-32]. According to the 
commonly accepted version of Matthew’s account, He 
also said, “ For as Jonah was three days and three 
nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of Man be 
three days and three nights in the heart of the earth ” 
[Matt. 12:40]. That statement is not contained in 
Luke’s account of the incident, and there is reason for 
believing that it was not originally in Matthew’s ac¬ 
count, but that it first appeared in the margin as an 
editorial comment, and was afterwards incorporated 
with the text by some mistaken transcriber. For, as a 
matter of fact, Jesus was not three days and three 
nights in the heart of the earth—that is, in the sepul¬ 
chre,—but only two nights and a part of three days— 
from Friday evening till Sunday morning, according 
to our terminology. He arose on the third day from 
the time of Plis crucifixion, according to the Jewish 
method of reckoning; but there were not really three 
days and three nights in the interim; and it is not at 
all likely that He made such a statement. Luke’s 
account of His reference to the story of Jonah, con¬ 
taining no mention of such an interment, is entirely 
accurate, in all probability; and if so, He meant that 
His preaching should be a warning to that wicked 
generation, as Jonah’s preaching was intended for a 
warning to the Ninevites. 


THE STORY OF JONAH 


81 


But, in either case, it by no means follows that the 
story was literally true, or that He believed it to be so. 
Knowing it to be an allegory, He could use it for illus¬ 
tration as conscientiously and as effectively as if it were 
strictly historical, especially if He knew that its alle¬ 
gorical character was familiar to* His hearers also. 

If a modern preacher, to illustrate a point in his 
sermon, should refer to some familiar incident in the 
story of the Pilgrim’s Progress, even though he should 
refer to it as if it were true, none of his hearers would 
suppose that he believed it to be so. If he should say, 
for example, that as Christian and Hopeful escaped 
from the dungeon of Giant Despair by means of the 
key which Christian found in his bosom, so we may 
always escape from our moods of despondency by 
means of our faith in the teachings of Christ, no one 
would suppose that he was committing himself to a 
belief in the literal accuracy of John Bunyan’s famous 
allegory. And, similarly, no one should assume that 
Jesus Christ believed the story of Jonah to be histor¬ 
ically true, merely because He used it for an illustrative 
purpose in connection with an important truth which 
He desired to emphasize. His hearers doubtless un¬ 
derstood that He was using it in that way—just as He 
used the Roman and Grecian mythology with reference 
to Hades and Elysium and Tartarus in His wonder¬ 
fully appropriate parable of the rich man and Lazarus. 

But if the story is an allegory, what did its author 
intend to teach by it? What verities were represented 
by it? 

Jonah was used as a representative of the whole 
Hebrew nation, with special reference to its prophetic 
character and its missionary calling. The entire nation 
was thus personified, as it was sometimes called Israel, 


82 


THE STORY OF JONAH 


or Jacob, or Jeshurum. Why the name of the prophet 
Jonah was so used in this story is now a matter of 
uncertainty. There was perhaps some local reason for 
it, well known at the time when the story was written—* 
as, owing to something that George Washington said, 
the name of Jonathan Trumbull, who was the governor 
of Connecticut during our Revolutionary War, became 
so representative of this country’s democracy that our 
nation even now is occasionally called “ Brother Jona¬ 
than ”; and as, owing to something that was once pub¬ 
lished by a popular satirist, the English nation is> often 
mentioned even now as “ John Bull.” 

The great city of Nineveh was used as a representa¬ 
tive of the whole Gentile world, whose recognized 
metropolis it was at that time; and the statement that 
Jonah was commanded to go there as a preacher repre¬ 
sented the fact that the Hebrew nation was under a 
sacred obligation to be a missionary nation, having 
been created not merely for its own sake, but for the 
sake of humanity, that in Abraham and his seed, as the 
book of Genesis says, all families of the earth might 
have a blessing. “ Thus saith the Lord God,” said 
Isaiah to Israel, “ I, the Lord, have called thee in 
righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep 
thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a 
light of the Gentiles, to open the blind eyes, to bring out 
the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in 
darkness out of the prison house.” 

But the nation which was thus chosen to be a light to 
the Gentiles persistently refused to respond to the call. 
It was not willing to be used as a missionary nation, to 
carry the knowledge of God and His truth to the world. 
It took no interest in the enlightenment and salvation 
of the Gentiles, but rather held itself aloof from them. 


THE STORY OF JONAH 


83 


declining to have any intercourse with them excepting 
in commercial matters. It was willing to trade with 
them, with a view to its own benefit, but not to do any¬ 
thing for their spiritual welfare—which is set forth in 
the allegory by the statement that Jonah, instead of 
going to Nineveh, took passage in a merchant ship 
which was going to Tarshish, a city on the coast of 
Spain, in exactly the opposite direction from Nineveh 
and almost at the other end of the then known world. 

The recreant nation could not escape from its duty, 
however, or from the punishment which it deserved for 
disregarding God’s will. From its selfish repose and 
sinful dreams it was rudely awakened by an Assyrian 
army which carried its people away into foreign captiv¬ 
ity, where they were kept in a state of bondage for 
seventy years—as, according to the allegory, Jonah 
was beset by a mighty tempest, and cast into the sea, 
and then swallowed by a great fish, in whose stomach 
he remained for three days and three nights. The 
story does not say that the great fish, was a whale; and 
in the Revised Version of the New Testament [Matt. 
12 : 40], “ sea-monster ” is given as a marginal render¬ 
ing. The sea-monster represented the Assyrian nation, 
while the three days and three nights represented the 
time of the Hebrew nation’s captivity. 

As we frequently speak of the American Eagle, the 
British Lion, and the Russian Bear, and represent the 
three nations by those particular animals, so the He¬ 
brews represented the leading nations of antiquity by 
different animals, and especially by such of them as live 
in the sea. 

In the seventh chapter of Daniel we read of four 
great beasts which came up from the sea, evidently 
symbolizing the four great world powers which pre- 


84 


THE STORY OF JONAH 


vailed at that time. In the twenty-ninth chapter of the 
book of Ezekiel it is said, “ Thus saith the Eord God; 
I am against thee, Pharaoh, King of Egypt, the great 
dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, where he 
hath said, My river is mine own and I have made it for 
myself ”; and in the thirty-second chapter of the same 
book it is said, “ Son of man, take up a lamentation for 
Pharaoh, King of Egypt, and say unto him, Thou art 
like a young lion of the nations, and thou art as a 
whale in the seas.” In the fifty-first chapter of Jere¬ 
miah it is said, “ Nebuchabnezzar, the King of Baby¬ 
lon, hath devoured me, he hath swallowed me up like a 
dragon, he hath filled his belly with my delicates. . . . 
And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring 
forth out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed 
up. . . . My people, go ye out of the midst of her. and 
deliver ye every man his soul from the fierce anger of 
the Lord.” And in the twenty-seventh chapter of 
Isaiah it is said, “ In that day the Lord with His sore 
and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the 
piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent, 
and He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea ”; and, 
again, “ In that day the great trumpet shall be blown, 
and they shall come which were ready to perish in the 
land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, 
and shall worship the Lord in the holy mount at Jerusa¬ 
lem.” In these passages of Scripture, Assyria and 
Egypt are specifically mentioned as sea-monsters, and 
are said to have swallowed the people of Israel, and it 
is prophesied that those people shall be released from 
captivity. 

The prophecy was fulfilled when, not many years 
afterward, the Assyrians were conquered by the Medes 
and the Persians, whose ruler, the famous Cyrus, set 


THE STORY OF JONAH 


85 


the Israelites at liberty and permitted them to return to 
the land of Judea—which is represented in the allegory 
by the statement that, after having been swallowed by 
the sea-monster, Jonah was vomited out by it upon the 
dry land. 

According to the allegory, while Jonah was im¬ 
prisoned in the belly of the sea-monster, he prayed for 
deliverance, and quoted from the book of Psalms cer¬ 
tain passages which seemed to be appropriate to the 
occasion—which correctly represents what the Israel¬ 
ites did during their Assyrian captivity; for the record 
shows that, during that time, they gave frequent ex¬ 
pression to lamentations and petitions and repetitions 
of the language of their prophets and psalmists. 
“ They cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He 
saved them out of their distresses.” 

But, alas, after returning to the land of Judea, the 
nation was as selfish and self-willed as before, and was 
not willing that the rest of the world should be saved. 
It was willing to denounce the Gentiles on account of 
their sins, but not to have them admitted to the King¬ 
dom of God. It was still unwilling to be a genuinely 
missionary nation—which is set forth in the allegory 
by the statement that, after finally going to Nineveh 
and threatening its inhabitants with destruction on ac¬ 
count of their sins, Jonah was angry because they re¬ 
pented and received God’s forgiveness. Like his New 
Testament antitype, the elder brother in the parable of 
the prodigal son, he was angry because his heavenly 
Father was merciful, not willing that any of His chil¬ 
dren should perish, but that they should turn from their 
evil ways and live. 

The allegory then tells us of the complaint which 
Jonah made because of the decay of the gourd which 



86 


THE STORY OF JONAH 


had temporarily sheltered him, and of the rebuke 
which the Lord gave to him on account of his selfish¬ 
ness. And there the allegory ends, with Jonah still 
hardening his heart towards the Gentiles, and the Lord 
reproving him for his selfishness and continuing to 
plead with him to be unselfish and kind to them. 

That was the situation when Christ came to this 
world to carry out the divine purpose to which the 
nation had been recreant. It was still a stiff-necked 
and rebellious nation. It still hated the Gentiles, and 
refused to engage in any mission of love to them; and 
the sequel to the allegorical story of Jonah is found in 
what the New Testament says of that nation, together 
with its history from that time until now. In the year 
70 of our era, it was again conquered by a foreign 
army and carried into captivity. The Roman Eagle 
swooped down upon it and flew off with it to the other 
end of the Mediterranean Sea, whence it was after¬ 
wards scattered all over the earth. Whether it will 
ever again return to the land of Judea remains to be 
seen. If the Zionists succeed with their project, it will; 
and some of the indications are now pointing that way. 
Dismembered and scattered all over the earth, it some¬ 
how survives, as Jonah is said to have survived in the 
sea-monster, and may finally be restored to its origi¬ 
nal home. 

But, however that may be, the great lesson of its 
history will remain just the same; and the story of 
Jonah, which was written for the admonition of that 
particular nation, is for our admonition also. If we 
are prudent, we shall profit by it. 

First among its lessons for us is the great truth that 
God’s love is co-extensive with humanity, impartially 
embracing all men, mercifully providing for the for- 


THE STORY OF JONAH 


87 


giveness of their manifold sins and for their ultimate 
blessedness. The story teaches the same lesson, in that 
respect, which Peter learned by his vision on the house¬ 
top of Joppa—that we should call no man common or 
unclean, but recognize all human beings as the objects 
of God’s love and care. 

In the next place, it teaches that God’s threatenings 
and punishments are never unjust or vindictive, but are 
always intended to produce reformation. As Jonah 
was punished to make him obedient, and as the Nine- 
vites were threatened with destruction to make them 
repent of their sins, so it is with all mankind: for 
“ God doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children 
of men; but though He cause grief, yet will He have 
compassion according to the multitude of His mercies ” 
[Lam. 3:31-33]. It is for our profit that He chastens 
us, to make us partakers of His holiness [Heb. 12: 10]. 

And, finally, this story teaches us that they who are 
at any time chosen by God to be the special recipients 
of His truth and His blessings are thereby obligated to 
be loving and generous and helpful towards those who 
are not so highly favoured. It teaches that the elect 
are under a solemn obligation to do missionary work 
among those who are non-elect, even in the most far¬ 
away parts of the earth. “ Go ye into all the world and 
preach the gospel to every creature,” said Jesus to His 
original band of disciples; and as long as the gospel has 
not been preached to any part of our race, or is not 
accepted by every one, it will be the duty of His dis¬ 
ciples to do missionary work for Him, either personally 
or by proxy; and none of them can neglect it without 
condemnation. 

Never was the opportunity greater than now. As 
Nineveh was ready for the preaching of Jonah, so the 


88 


THE STORY OF JONAH 


whole non-Christian world is now ready for the mis¬ 
sionaries of the gospel of Christ. Oh, that this nation 
were a missionary nation to the full extent of its won¬ 
derful opportunity and ability! And, oh, that all of us 
were so imbued with the missionary spirit that our 
missionaries in foreign lands could always depend on 
our generous support and encouragement! 

“ Shall we, whose souls are lighted 
With wisdom from on high, 

Shall we to men benighted 
The lamp of life deny? 

Salvation, O, Salvation! 

The joyful sound proclaim. 

Till earth's remotest nation 
Has learned Messiah’s name ” 


IX 

GOD’S ELECT: WHO AND WHY? 


" Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” 

—Rom. 8:33. 

N EVER was there a more chivalrous soldier of 
the cross than the man who wrote these defiant 
words, in answer to those who were finding 
fault with his missionary work. There were a great 
many such fault-finders, not only among the heathen 
people but also among those Christianized Jews who 
insisted that all Christians should obey the laws of the 
Jews. The heathen people charged him with irre- 
ligion and irreverence because he opposed their idol¬ 
atry, and the Judaizers charged him with heresy and 
hypocrisy and selfishness and foolishness because he 
opposed their narrow-mindedness. Some of those 
accusations are answered by him in the eleventh and 
twelfth chapters of his second letter to the Corinthians. 
But here, instead of answering them in detail, he simply 
throws down the gauntlet to all of the fault-finders 
and challenges them to prove anything against him 
and his fellow-labourers, whom he calls God’s elect. 
In justification of his work and his methods he ap¬ 
peals to God and to Christ, Who have chosen him 
for the work and to Whom he is strictly accountable. 
“ It is God that justifieth,” he says; “ who is he that 
condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, who 
is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh 
intercession for us.” 


89 


90 


GOD’S ELECT: WHO AND WHY? 


And history now shows that his challenge was justi¬ 
fied. It shows that his teaching was justified, that his 
methods were justified, and that he was personally 
justified. It shows that he was what he claimed to be, 
a person whom God had elected to preach the Christian 
religion, to make converts among the Gentiles, and so 
to prepare the way for the great consummation when 
all mankind shall be saved. 

But, strange to say, during the last fifteen centuries 
most Christians have greatly mistaken his meaning. 
Ever since the time of Augustine it has been assumed 
by the most of them that the elect, in the Scriptural 
sense of the expression, are those whom God has elected 
out of the great mass of mankind to' be saved from 
everlasting punishment, while all of the others, not 
being so elected, are irrevocably doomed to such a 
destiny. It has been assumed that God’s purpose in 
thus electing a certain portion of mankind to be saved 
has been to promote His own glory, which, according 
to the Westminster Confession of Faith, is equally pro¬ 
moted by the damnation of the rest of mankind. Ac¬ 
cording to that historic and remarkable document, the 
number of the elect was determined before they were 
born, and, indeed, before the world was made, and is 
so certain and definite that it can be neither increased 
nor diminished; and, furthermore, it was determined 
without reference to either their faith or their works 
or their moral character, and was due to nothing else 
but His own counsel and pleasure and immutable pur¬ 
pose. That is to say, according to the Calvinistic 
doctrine, the election of those who are to be saved is 
simply a matter of good luck or good fortune, so far 
as they are concerned, for which they should be de¬ 
voutly thankful. 


GOD’S ELECT: WHO AND WHY? 


91 


The Arminian doctrine agrees with the Calvinistic 
in saying that the elect are those persons who are to 
be saved by God’s grace from the everlasting damnation 
which will certainly be the destiny of all of the rest of 
mankind. But it denies that the number can be neither 
increased nor diminished and that it was determined 
beforehand without reference to anything in the per¬ 
sons themselves. It says that God has elected them 
because He foresaw that they would believe in the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and, furthermore, that if any of them 
cease to believe in Him, they will then cease to be 
elected, and must suffer accordingly. 

In short, the difference between Calvinism and 
Arminianism in regard to those persons who are called 
the elect is as to whether their election is unconditional 
and irrevocable or conditional and to be revoked, if 
they disobey its requirements. Around that question 
great controversies have been waged in the past. In 
fact, the dispute about that matter between the Calvin¬ 
ists and the Arminians has resembled that of certain 
scientists who, in the early days of our modern discov¬ 
eries about electricity, disputed as to whether it con¬ 
sisted of one fluid or of two, whereas we have now 
discovered that it is no fluid at all. And so, if we in¬ 
telligently study the Bible in regard to those persons 
whom it calls the elect, we find that the Calvinists and 
the Arminians are equally mistaken, inasmuch as it 
negatives the assumption that God has elected the elect 
either for the purpose of saving them from everlasting 
damnation, or merely to show His own power and to 
promote His own glory. 

We shall find that His purpose in electing them in¬ 
cludes their salvation in the final result, but that it 
refers, first of all, not to their final salvation, but to 


92 


GOD’S ELECT: WHO AND WHY? 


their immediate activity in doing, as His agents, what 
He wants them to do. 

The original Greek word which is rendered “ elect ” 
in our English version of the New Testament is more 
frequently rendered “ chosen/’ which means the same 
thing. To elect is to choose, and the translators have 
used the two words interchangeably. And if we study 
the Bible carefully, to see for what purpose God has 
elected those persons to whom the expression refers, we 
find that in every instance He has chosen or elected 
them not merely for their own future salvation or 
damnation, but primarily for His service and for the 
service of humanity on this side of the grave. 

He elected Abraham from among all of the inhabi¬ 
tants of Chaldea to be the founder of a new nation, 
not merely for his own sake, but that through him and 
his posterity all families of the earth might eventually 
have a blessing. Eater on, He elected Moses, whom 
the Psalmist expressly calls “ His chosen,” to lead the 
people of Israel out of their Egyptian captivity, for the 
furtherance of the same purpose for which Abraham 
was elected. Later still, He elected David, of whom 
the Psalmist declares that “ He chose David also His 
servant, and took him from the sheepfold,” for the 
furtherance of the same great purpose. And for that 
purpose He elected the whole Jewish nation—or, per¬ 
haps I should say, the Jewish nation as a whole—to be 
unto Him a peculiar people,—not, as some of them 
foolishly and arrogantly imagined, as a matter of 
favouritism for their selfish advantage, but, as He told 
them, by means of His chosen prophets, to be a light to 
the Gentiles, a missionary nation through whose in¬ 
strumentality the people of all nations should come to 
know Him and worship Him. 



GOD’S ELECT: WHO AND WHY? 


93 


And then, after Christ’s advent—Who Himself came 
as God’s agent in the cause of humanity—the same 
principle was followed out in the election of His 
apostles. They were chosen not merely with reference 
to their personal salvation, but as missionaries and 
servants for the salvation of others. “Ye have not 
chosen me,” He told them, “ but I have chosen you, 
that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your 
fruit should remain ”; and in His last prayer for them 
He pra)red that they might all be one, even as He and 
the Father were one, that the world might know that 
the Father had sent Him. He told them that they were 
to be the light of the world, and the salt of the earth, 
and the leaven in humanity, and the seed of the king¬ 
dom of heaven on earth. 

And when Paul was converted, on the highway near 
Damascus, God said in regard to him, “ Pie is a chosen 
vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles 
and kings and the children of Israel.” That is how 
and why he became one of the elect. He was elected 
to carry out God’s will, for the salvation of the 
human race. 

The same was true of the whole body of Christians 
in those days. They were called God’s elect, and were 
told that He had chosen them as fellow-labourers in 
redeeming the world. “ Of His own will begat He us 
with the word of truth,” said St. James to the readers 
of his general epistle, “ that we should be a kind of 
first-fruits of His creatures ”; and St. Peter said, “ Ye 
are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a peculiar 
people, that ye should show forth the praises of Him 
who hath called you out of darkness into His marvel¬ 
ous light.” 

We see, then, that, according to the Bible, God elects 


94 


GOD’S ELECT: WHO AND WHY? 


people not as a matter of favouritism, and not merely 
for their own advantage, but to do His work in the 
world and to help in carrying out His purpose for the 
salvation of the human race. He elects them not in 
order to give them “ the spoils of office/’ but that they 
may use their election as a sacred trust for the ad¬ 
vantage of their fellowmen; not for selfishness, but 
for service. 

And it is very evident, moreover, that He elects them 
not, as the Westminster Confession declares, without 
reference to anything in themselves as a reason for 
electing them, but, on the contrary, with direct refer¬ 
ence to their fitness for what He desires of them— 
their fitness being determined by their ability and their 
willingness. In every instance which is mentioned in 
the Bible, it is evident that the election depended on 
those two things—ability and willingness to render the 
kind of service which the Lord had in view. Abraham, 
Moses, every one of the prophets, David, the Jewish 
nation, the twelve apostles, Paul and his fellow- 
workers, were elected because of their special fitness for 
the work which was required of them. They had the 
ability and the willingness, and therefore God elected 
them. He never makes any mistakes in regard to those 
whom He chooses. He knows before electing them 
just what their qualifications are. He reads their 
minds and their hearts and knows everything concern¬ 
ing them. And if, after He has elected them, they 
cease for any reason, to have the fitness which Pie re¬ 
quired of them, He no longer elects them, but removes 
their names from His service book and puts others in 
place of them. That is what He did with the Jewish 
nation, which forfeited its election by its unwillingness 
to accept Christ and be a missionary nation—just as 


GOD’S ELECT: WHO AND WHY? 95 

Judas did by his unfaithfulness to the service of Christ 
Judas was originally one of the apostles who- were 
chosen by Christ, and for a while he was true to Him; 
but afterwards he fell away; and then the Saviour, 
knowing his heart, even before he himself was fully 
aware of his wickedness, sorrowfully said to all of 
them, “ Have I not chosen you twelve ”—or elected 
you twelve —“ and one of you is a devil.” From 
being one of the elect Judas became one of the non¬ 
elect by reason of his unfaithfulness. Thousands of 
others have done so. The number of the elect, in¬ 
stead of being so definite that it can be neither 
increased nor diminished, is constantly varying, be¬ 
cause it is determined by the number of those who are 
fitted for it. 

God chooses those, and only those, whom He knows 
to be qualified for what He wants them to do. And 
He sometimes chooses very strangely, from a merely 
human point of view. The persons whom He elects 
are not always the ones whom their fellowmen would 
elect. On the contrary, they are quite as frequently 
despised and persecuted by the very people in whose 
service the Almighty is using them. “Ye see your 
calling, brethren,” said St. Paul to his fellow-Chris- 
tians, “ how that not many wise men after the flesh, 
not many mighty, not many noble, are called; but God 
hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound 
the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the 
world to confound the things that are mighty; and base 
things of the world, and things which are despised, 
hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to 
bring to naught things that are: that no flesh should 
glory in His presence.” 

The early Christians were despised by the upper 



96 


GOD’S ELECT: WHO AND WHY? 


classes of society, who scoffed at their claims and de¬ 
rided their teachings, as a good many people used to 
scoff at the Salvation Army. They could not, or 
would not, admit that such people had any real com¬ 
mission to do God’s work in the world. But they had, 
nevertheless. And so have many other people, whose 
ideas may seem strange to us and whose methods may 
not be just the same as our own. It is not necessary 
for God’s elect to think exactly alike, nor to use exactly 
the same methods. Even the apostles had their differ¬ 
ences, and Peter and Paul once engaged in a dispute 
which almost led to a rupture of their ecclesiastical 
relationship. But God elected and used all of them, 
each to do in his own way his own part of the work 
for which Jesus, their Lord and Master, had come to 
this world. 

In secular history, also, there are numberless illus¬ 
trations of the same divine principle—that God elects 
certain people for certain great purposes according 

to their fitness for the work which He wants them 

/ 

to do. 

We are told in the Bible that He elected Cyrus, King 
of Persia, to deliver the people of Israel from their 
Babylonian captivity. And no less certainly He elected 
Columbus to discover this continent, and the Pilgrim 
Fathers to establish a new commonwealth in this coun¬ 
try, and George Washington to command the victorious 
army which delivered it from the yoke of political 
bondage, and Abraham Lincoln to be its President dur¬ 
ing the sectional warfare which resulted in the liber¬ 
ation of four millions of slaves. All of those great 
leaders were God's chosen agents, and every one of 
them did his work against great opposition. Every one 
of them was accused of incompetency or foolishness or 


GOD’S ELECT: WHO AND WHY? 


97 


unworthy motives and suffered accordingly. But God 
has abundantly justified them, as He justifies every one 
who is faithful to the service for which He has chosen 
him, whether in preaching the gospel or in doing any¬ 
thing else for the good of mankind. 

“ In God’s great field of labour 
All work is not the same; 

He hath a service for each one 
Who loves His holy name 

One person may be elected to serve as a clergyman, 
another as a social service worker, another as a social 
or political reformer, another as a student and scholar 
and educator, another as a merchant, another as an 
artist, another as an inventor, another as a musician, 
another in any one of a hundred pursuits, each of 
which is helpful to the welfare of humanity; and the 
important thing is that, whatever a person’s particular 
calling may be, he shall have a high ideal concerning 
it and be invariably true thereto, doing his work in 
such a way as to have God’s approval, regardless of 
what mankind may say. 

Be among the elect, then, by using your talents, 
many or few, in the service of God and humanity. 
Never find fault with any person who is doing the 
Lord’s work in a different way from your own. And 
never let any fault-finding prevent you from doing it to 
the best of your ability as God tells you to do it by His 
voice in your soul. Choose Him for your director, and 
He will choose you, and direct you, and justify you, 
and glorify you in His own befitting time and way. 


X 

THINKING AND BEING 


“Bat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, 
neither desire thou his dainty meats; for as he thinketh in 
his heart, so is he. Bat and drink, saith he; but his heart is 
not with thee /'— Prov. 23 : 6 , 7 . 

“ Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are hon¬ 
est, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, 
think on these things — Phil,. 4 : 8 . 

A MONG the many Scriptural sayings which are 
often misquoted and misapplied, there are but 
few which are so treated with greater frequency 
than that portion of my text which says that “ as he 
thinketh in his heart, so is he.” A great many persons 
suppose it to say that “ as a man thinketh, so is he ”; 
and not a few of them suppose that it is a genuine 
proof text of the doctrine that a person’s corporeal 
condition is entirely dependent on his mental condition, 
being nothing but a reflection of the thoughts which he 
holds. They would have us believe that, according to 
the inspired writer’s meaning, we are warm or cold, 
weak or strong, sick or healthy, only as we think that 
we are so, and that we can change the condition by 
merely changing our thinking. 

But the inspired writer did not say that “ as a man 
thinketh, so is he.” He did not even say that “ as a 
man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” He said, “ As he 
thinketh in his heart, so is he,” and the context very 

98 


THINKING AND BEING 


99 


plainly shows that, instead of referring to people in 
general, he was referring only to a certain kind of 
people, and that, instead of referring to their thinking 
about their physical condition, he was referring to their 
disposition as hypocrites and enemies. 

Be not deceived by false professions of friendship, 
nor beguiled by an evil-minded person who, to serve 
his own puq>oses, invites you to dine with him and 
feeds you with luxuries; for, notwithstanding his pro¬ 
fessions and his appearance of hospitality, his heart is 
not with you, and, instead of being your friend, he is 
really your enemy; he is not what he pretends to be; he 
is what his thoughts would indicate if you could look 
into his heart and see what his intentions are,—that, 
and that only, is what the passage really means. It 
means, that as the Bard of Avon says, “ a man may 
smile, and smile, and be a villain,” and that, as Robert 
Burns says, 

" The heart aye’s the past aye 
That makes us right or wrang.” 

And that is an exceedingly serious truth, with a great 
number of applications. For what any person really is 
does not depend on his verbal statements, nor even on 
his reputation, but on what we call his moral character; 
and that is determined by the thoughts which he holds. 

If a person’s thoughts are all pure and honest and 
loving, then his character, as a matter of course, is 
correspondingly good. But if his thoughts are vile and 
dishonest, no matter what his words or his conduct may 
be, his character is bad, and he is equally so. In the 
sight of God, he is exactly such a man as his thinking 
implies. It is impossible for a good man to cherish bad 
thoughts, or for a bad man to cherish good thoughts, 


100 


THINKING AND BEING 


as a general rule. Each of them thinks habitually ac¬ 
cording to his character, and determines his character 
by means of his thinking. Tell me what sort of 
thoughts a person commonly has, and I will tell you 
what sort of a person he is. 

To be sure, any person may occasionally have wan¬ 
dering thoughts, which vary from the usual train of 
his thinking, without having his character determined 
thereby. A good man may occasionally have bad 
thoughts, and a bad man may occasionally have good 
thoughts, without being deeply affected or materially 
changed by them. They may soon pass away, and 
leave his character very nearly the same as before. 
Even such thoughts, however, are likely to have some 
influence on him who gives way to them. No one who 
thinks either a good thought or a bad thought is en¬ 
tirely unaffected by it. God can see, if we cannot, that 
he is either somewhat the better or somewhat the worse 
for it. And the more frequently a person has such 
thoughts, the more he is affected by them, and the 
more likely to form a habit of thinking in that way. 
Jesus has said that for every idle word that men shall 
speak they shall give account in a day of judgment; 
and the reason is that such words give expression to 
their thoughts. The thoughts register themselves by a 
psychological process on the characters of those who 
speak them. And so it is with unspoken thoughts. 
For good or for ill, our characters are affected by them. 

Moreover, a person’s thinking greatly contributes to 
his happiness or his unhappiness. It is a common mis¬ 
take to suppose that happiness and unhappiness are 
chiefly dependent on outward conditions, and that if 
we could make everybody well off in regard to such 
matters we should be able to drive misery out of the 


o 


THINKING AND BEING 


101 


world. But the fact is far otherwise. Some people 
who are exceptionally well off in regard to outward 
conditions are exceptionally miserable, nevertheless; 
while some whose outward circumstances are very far 
from propitious are nevertheless very cheerful. A per¬ 
son’s happiness or unhappiness lies chiefly in his way 
of thinking. If his thoughts, like a sunflower, habit¬ 
ually turn in the direction of brightness, if he mentally 
faces towards that which is hopeful and cheerful, then, 
no matter what his outward condition may be, he has 
the secret of happiness within his own breast and 
nothing can deprive him of it. But, if his thoughts are 
like the night-shade, which blooms in dampness and 
gloominess, then, no matter what his outward condition 
may be, he will be full of unhappiness. As Milton has 
beautifully and forcefully said, 

“ He that has light within his own clear breast 
May sit i’ the center and enjoy bright day; 

But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts 
Benighted walks under the midday sun; 

Himself is his own dungeon ” 

And not only does a person’s thinking have a decided 
effect on his inward condition, but it is likely to have a 
marked effect on his outward condition. It may have 
a distinct effect on his physical organs, either helping 
them or impeding them in the performance of their 
functions. Multitudes of persons have made them¬ 
selves sick by constantly thinking that they were sick, 
or that they were going to be sick, and nervously giving 
way to hypochondriac fancies. And multitudes of 
others have kept themselves in good health by refusing 
to allow their thoughts ever to run in such channels. 
More than that, many persons have been cured of sick- 


102 


THINKING AND BEING 


ness by simply turning their thoughts into channels of 
healthfulness, especially in cases where, wholly or 
partly, the sickness had a mental origin. 

We need not accept the extravagant doctrine that all 
diseases are merely mental and are mentally curable. 
That doctrine is contradicted by the experience of man¬ 
kind, and no good reason has ever been shown for 
believing it. But it is true, nevertheless, that the mind 
often has a powerful effect on the body, and that, in 
order to lx cured, certain sick people need only to stop 
thinking of their sickness, and go about their work or 
their pleasure in life with a proper observance of the 
principles of hygiene. No less than in Shakespeare’s 
time it is often seen that 

“ When the mind is quickened, out of doubt 
The organs, though defunct and dead before, 

Break up their drowsy grave, and newly move 
With casted slough and fresh legerity 

That is why a course of travel sometimes benefits a 
sick man. It diverts his mind from his ailments. It 
turns his thoughts away from his aches and his pains 
and his nervous system, and, by giving him new 
thoughts of an agreeable kind, removes the nervous 
irritation and gives nature a chance, which it quickly 
improves, to restore the diseased organs to their normal 
condition. 

Exactly how the mind is related to the body, and 
precisely how they affect each other, is fully known to 
no one excepting Him who created them. The physi¬ 
ologists and psychologists have thrown some light on 
the matter, and perhaps they will give us further light 
by-and-by. But we do not need any more in order to 
see that, in some way, the body and the mind are very 


THINKING AND BEING 


103 


closely related and that each of them has an effect on 
the other’s condition. 

Every one knows that great mental excitement, either 
of joy or of sorrow, may destroy a person’s appetite 
and prevent him from sleeping. Mental fear, mental 
sorrow, and mental anxiety have physical effects, some¬ 
times of an exceedingly serious nature. Cases have 
been known, indeed, in which persons have died from 
fear alone, or from thinking that they were to die at a 
specified time, on account of their belief in a fortune¬ 
teller’s prediction. 

It is said that certain Roman Catholics, by intently 
fixing their thoughts for a long time on the crucifix, 
and especially on the marks of the nails which were 
driven into the Saviour’s hands and feet, have received 
blood-red marks in their own hands and feet, and have 
regarded them as tokens of his heavenly favour. Until 
recently most Protestants have disbelieved such reports, 
attributing them either to falsehood or to a diseased 
imagination; but some of the most competent Protes¬ 
tant authorities now admit that such cases do really 
occur, and psychologists say that they are caused by 
auto-suggestion—which simply means that the devotee, 
by fixing his thoughts on the Saviour’s wounds, sug¬ 
gests the reception of such marks in his own hands and 
feet and so causes a congestion of blood in those places. 

Yes, the mind has a mysterious relation to the body, 
and the nature of a person’s thinking may greatly 
modify the performance of his physical functions. “ A 
merry heart,” as the Scripture says, “ doeth good like 
a medicine”; and it may sometimes do away with 
the need of medicine. Cheerful, hopeful, prayerful 
thoughts are a wonderful help to one s bodily health. 
They help to keep him out of the doctor’s hands; and 


104 THINKING AND BEING 

when it becomes necessary to summon a doctor, they 
work together with the doctor to restore him to health. 

Furthermore, a person’s thinking is the most impor¬ 
tant factor in determining his conduct. In the long 
run, his habitual thinking is quite sure to be expressed 
in his behaviour; and even what he thinks for a passing 
moment may result in very serious practical conse¬ 
quences. Conduct, as a rule, is the expression of 
thought; and it is owing to that fact that society has 
come to its present condition. It is responsible for the 
best and the worst features of our civilization. Shakes¬ 
peare makes Caesar say of Cassius, “ He thinks too 
much; such men are dangerous ”; and if men think too 
much in a certain way, they are certainly the most 
dangerous men in the community. If they think ap¬ 
provingly of anarchy, or tyranny, or licentiousness, or 
robbery, or political chicanery by which to enrich them¬ 
selves, then, the more they think the more dangerous 
they are. “ Make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil 
the lusts thereof,” says the Scripture, and the only way 
in which to obey that injunction is not to think of such 
fulfilment without being averse to' it. To think of it 
longingly, or even doubtfully, is to make some provis¬ 
ion for it; it is to take the first step towards it. 
Whereas he who thinks of doing beneficent things is 
thereby making provision for their actual accomplish¬ 
ment. As long as the world stands, people will act, for 
the most part, according to their thinking. Their 
thoughts will continue to be the seeds of their conduct, 
the sources from which their behaviour will spring. 

Evidently, therefore, it makes a great difference 
whether a person controls his thoughts or lets them 
wander uncontrolled, and whether he thinks of noble 
or of ignoble things. No one is more mistaken than 


THINKING AND BEING 


105 


he who assumes that there is no harm in merely think¬ 
ing whatever he likes to think. As well assume that 
it makes no difference what kind of a captain has 
charge of a ship, as long as it avoids a shipwreck. It 
may keep a safe course, for some distance at least, 
under an ignorant or a drunken or a disloyal captain 
or under one whose intentions are those of a pirate ; 
but what about the conditions inside of that ship and 
the likelihood of its continuing to the end of its voyage 
with no injury to any one ? The thinking part of a man 
is the ruler of his conduct, the captain of his complex 
nature; and what he thinks is therefore a matter of the 
greatest importance. It makes all of the difference 
between a good man and a bad man, a contented man 
and a wretched man, a man whose life is a blessing to 
himself and to others and one whose life is a miserable 
burden to himself and the community. 

How important, then, to control our thoughts in 
obedience to the exhortation, “ Whatsoever things are 
true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things 
are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things 
are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if 
there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think 
on these things ”! That is the right way for us. It is 
the way for us to be what we ought to be. Let us care¬ 
fully follow it, “ bringing into captivity every thought 
to the obedience of Christ,” that the same mind may be 
in us which was also in Him; for so shall we cultivate 
true manhood and womanhood, and so shall an entrance 
be ministered unto us abundantly into His eternal king¬ 
dom of righteousness and peace and joy. 


XI 


HAVING AND BEING 

“Jesus said unto him, If thou wouldst be perfect, go, sell 
that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have 
treasure in heaven; and come, follow me — Matt. 19: 21. 

T HE young man to whom Jesus spoke these 
words was possessed of great wealth and high 
standing in society, and also of an excellent 
moral character, according to the ordinary rules of 
morality. Amiable, free from vices, and religiously 
inclined, he had many of the qualities which would 
have fitted him to be a teacher and an exemplar of 
Christianity; and, knowing what was in him, Jesus 
desired to have him as one of His followers. 

And no less does He now desire to have every such 
person take part in the great work which His Church 
has to do. Far from denying or despising the good 
qualities of those persons who have not accepted His 
leadership, He appreciates them and wishes to utilize 
them in the highest degree. He longs to have them 
inside of His organized kingdom, where they can be 
of the greatest service to God and mankind; and that 
is where they ought to be. Such people should be in 
the organization which is entitled to the service of all 
right-minded men, and they should be persuaded to 
enter it—as precious stones should be taken from the 
earth or the sea and be placed in an appropriate set¬ 
ting, that their beauty and brilliancy may be fully dis¬ 
played. The most appropriate setting for any person’s 

106 


HAVING AND BEING 


107 


good qualities is the organized Kingdom of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. There they are seen to* the best advan¬ 
tage, and there they can do the most good. The rich 
young ruler, even if he had been a much more virtuous 
man than he was, ought to have followed Jesus Christ 
and to have become one of His helpers, not only be¬ 
cause of the help which he could have given but also 
because of the help which he needed to receive. 

For rich though he was and highly esteemed by his 
acquaintances, he nevertheless was not satisfied. He 
felt that something was lacking, without which he 
could never be fully contented. And therefore, having 
heard that Jesus was promising eternal life, he went 
to Him, and said, “ Good Master, what good thing 
shall I do that I may have eternal life? ” His idea of 
eternal life was somewhat vague and imperfect. Just 
what the promised blessing was, he did not distinctly 
understand; but, regarding it as something which was 
eminently desirable, he inquired what he should do as 
a means of obtaining it. 

Instead of immediately answering his question, Jesus 
asked him a question, and then followed it with a state¬ 
ment whose meaning is very commonly misunderstood. 
“Why callest thou me good?” said tie; “there is 
none good but one, that is God.” 

This saying is often used by Trinitarian theologians 
as a proof of the doctrine that Jesus is God. They 
contend that if Jesus told the truth, either He Himself 
is God or He was not even a good man, and that we 
must therefore accept Him as God, or believe that He 

was conscious of sinfulness. 

That such was not His meaning, however, is very 
evident from a number of Biblical passages in which 
goodness is ascribed to c'ertain persons who were mani- 


108 


HAVING AND BEING 


fectly no more than human. For instance, we are told 
that John the Baptist was “ a just man and holy ” 
[Mark 6:20] ; that Joseph of Arimathea was “ a good 
man and a just ” [Luke 23: 50] ; that Barnabas was 
“ a good man and full of the Holy Ghost ” [Acts 
11:24]; that there are “ spirits of just men made per¬ 
fect ” [Heb. 12: 23] ; and that the angels are “ holy ” 
[Rev. 14: 10]. If, therefore, the Saviour’s statement 
that none is good but God proves that He Himself is 
God, it proves that all of those other good persons are 
God, and that there are not merely three persons, con¬ 
stituting a Trinity, but many thousands of persons to 
whom Deity should be attributed. And, on the other 
hand, if the goodness of such persons does not prove 
that they are God, neither does Christ’s goodness prove 
Him to be God. To interpret His statement as proving 
either His Deity or His sinfulness is to put too great 
a strain upon it, a strain which it was surely not in¬ 
tended to bear. 

The purpose of Jesus, in speaking as He did, was not 
to claim Deity or anything else for Himself, but to 
bring the young ruler face to face with the fact that 
the ultimate source of all goodness is God, and that no 
one else can rightly claim any goodness for Himself 
excepting as God gives it to Him. He never person¬ 
ally claimed any goodness or wisdom excepting that 
which He derived from His heavenly Father. “ The 
words that I speak unto you,” said He, “ I speak not 
of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in me, He doethj 
the works”; and, again, “As the Father hath life in 
Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in 
himself, and hath given him authority to execute judg¬ 
ment also, because he is the Son of man.” He was 
spiritually perfect because the spirit of the Father was 


HAVING AND BEING 


109 


given to Him without measure [John 3: 34], inspiring 
Him in whatsoever He thought, said, and did. But He 
saw that the young ruler was inclined to self-righteous^ 
ness, as well as to the common habit of using empty, 
thoughtless compliments; and so He seized the oppor¬ 
tunity to give him a gentle rebuke on account of it, 
and to turn his thoughts away from all derivative good¬ 
ness to the supreme righteousness and ineffable glory 
of God. 

Then, for the purpose of bringing him to a realiza¬ 
tion of his actual need, He mentioned certain com¬ 
mandments which he ought to obey, including the 
second great commandment, “ Thou shalt love thy 
neighbour as thyself ” ; and finally He told him that, if 
he wished to be perfect, he should give away his 
worldly goods and become one of His followers in the 
great work of self-denial to which He was giving His 
life. Whereupon the young man’s countenance fell, 
and he went away very sorrowful, because his affec¬ 
tions were set on material things rather than on spir¬ 
itual and heavenly things. Between the object which 
he had in view and that which Jesus set before him 
there was a difference so radical as to prevent him from 
accepting the proposal. What he desired was to have 
something—something which was called eternal life. 
What the Saviour proposed to him was, in the first 
place, to he something—to be perfect—and, as a con¬ 
sequence, to have treasure in heaven. In the young 
man’s mind, the desire to possess something was the 
principal thing. But Jesus gave the foremost place to 
the desire to be perfect, as our heavenly Father is 
perfect. And that is what He always does. In His 
teachings, the question of having is always subordinate 
to the question of being. “ Seek ye first,” He says, 


110 


HAVING AND BEING 


“ the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all 
these things shall be added unto you.” The young 
man was not doing so. To his way of thinking, 
having, not being, was the principal thing. 

That is the trouble with the great majority of man¬ 
kind in this world. As one of the Grecian dramatists 
observed, long ago, 

“By nature man is formed with boundless wishes 
For prosperous fortune; and the great man's door 
Stands ever open to that envied person 
On whom she smiles 

Mankind have by nature a passionate desire for 
worldly possessions and temporal pleasures; and in 
most people that desire is vastly stronger and more 
influential than the desire for perfection and heav¬ 
enly things. Hence the lack of satisfaction, the schem- 
ings, the disappointments, the heartaches, the enmities, 
the frauds, and the crimes. It is the desire to have 
something rather than to be something that gives rise 
to the greater part of the iniquitous thoughts and the 
contemptible deeds with which people do despite to the 
nobility of their lineage as the offspring of God. It 
makes the lives of thousands of them a tumultuous 
scramble from the cradle to the grave. It makes them 
bestial in their conduct, like swine that jostle one an¬ 
other in their endeavour to secure the most of the swill, 
or like wolves that snarl at one another while they are 
devouring their wounded comrades that have fallen by 
the way. It is the cause of the unscrupulous compe¬ 
tition in business which is said to be the life of trade, 
but which causes the destruction of many a trader, and 
also of the so-called “ trusts ” which crush all rival 
enterprises and threaten to subject our country to the 


HAVING AND BEING 


111 


rule of a moneyed oligarchy. It is the cause of the de¬ 
testable political corruption which disgraces our cities, 
our states, and our nation, and of the continuous war¬ 
fare between capitalists and labourers, and of interna¬ 
tional conflicts all over the world. Jesus called it 
covetousness; and, like the covetousness of those people 
who struggled for the Rhinegold, in the Nibelungen 
legend, it always brings unhappiness to the people who 
harbour it. 

And, sad to say, the desire to have something rather 
than to be something is not confined to unchurched 
people, nor are the objects to> which it is directed con¬ 
fined to this world. It is held by many church mem¬ 
bers, and it determines their hopes for the future life 
as well as their church connections in the life that now 
is. For who can deny that with a great many people 
the main purpose of church membership is not so much 
to be perfect as to have a place in heaven after leaving 
this world? And how much better or more Christian 
is such a desire than that of him to whom the Saviour 
addressed the words of my text? Other-worldliness as 
a motive is no more Christian than worldliness. No 
person is a genuine disciple of Christ if he professes 
Christianity merely for what he expects to gain by it, 
outside of his own spiritual condition and character, 
whether here or hereafter, in this world or the world 
to come. The desire for gain is not godliness, no mat¬ 
ter where the gain is expected to be. Worldliness and 
other-worldliness are pretty much the same thing. 

However, do not understand me either to say or to 
imply that a desire to have the good things of this 
world, or that a desire to be happy after death, is un¬ 
christian; or that an effort to gratify such a desire is 
necessarily blameworthy. On the contrary, it is right 


112 


HAVING AND BEING 


for us to desire such things and also to strive for them, 
to a reasonable extent and in a reasonable way. Jesus 
never condemned either the desire or the effort. But He 
condemned the very common habit of giving that de¬ 
sire the principal place and allowing it to be the ruling 
motive. Right enough in its place as a subordinate 
motive, it is wrong when exalted to the foremost posi¬ 
tion; for a person’s life consisteth not in the abundance 
of the things which he possesseth, but in the spirit or 
the character with which he possesses or renounces 
them, as the case may demand. 

“Manhood is the one immortal thing 
Beneath time’s changing sky,” 

and true manhood is the principal thing to be sought 
by us. Adapting the language of Hamlet’s soliloquy, 
we may truthfully say, “ To be, or not to be, that is 
the question.” And if we decide, as we ought to, to 
try to be perfect, then the thing for us to do is to fol¬ 
low Jesus Christ in His life of devotion to the good 
of mankind. 

To the young ruler He said, “ If thou wouldst be 
perfect, go, sell that thou hast: and come, follow me.” 
In that case, He intended that His advice should be 
literally taken; for He wanted the young man to be 
one of His companions, like Peter, Andrew, James, 
and John. To follow Him in that way is not possible 
in these days, nor does He now require His disciples 
to leave their worldly occupations or to sacrifice all of 
their worldly possessions. But He does require us to 
be willing to do so if it were necessary, and to make 
whatever sacrifices are really necessary for us in order 
to prove that our Christianity is not fictitious but genu¬ 
ine. He requires us to hold ourselves and all of our 


HAVING AND BEING 


113 


worldly possessions in subservience to the interests of 
His heavenly Kingdom, and to be ready, at any mo¬ 
ment, to spend and be spent for the good of His cause. 

We cannot obtain eternal life by merely professing 
Christianity, nor can we become perfect by merely de¬ 
siring to be so. We must do the things that make for 
perfectness; and that necessitates self-sacrifice. “If 
any man will come after me,” said He, “ let him deny 
himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me ”; 
and, while the conditions have greatly changed since 
then, the principle remains the same. To follow Him 
in a selfish spirit is an impossibility. They who try to 
do so must certainly fail. But they who actually fol¬ 
low Him in His life of unselfishness obtain the gift of 
eternal life. 

Compare the case of the rich young ruler with that 
of the apostle Paul, who had also been a Jewish ruler 
of high standing and influence. The former refused to 
follow Jesus, because of his devotion to his worldly 
possessions. He kept them, and was a rich man pre¬ 
sumably, in the world’s estimation, till the day of his 
death. Whereas the apostle renounced his wealth and 
his station, counting them but dross in comparison with 
the riches of Christ, and thereafter lived and died a 
poor man in the estimation of the generality of the 
people who knew him. But which of the two was the 
richer in reality, and which was the one to be pitied on 
account of his poverty? When the one who turned 
away from Jesus came to the end of his earthly career, 
what were his assets in comparison with those of the 
servant of Christ? What did he leave behind him of 
any value to mankind, and what did he carry with him 
of any value to himself? Alas, how very little, so far 
as we know! While Paul, though poor in worldly 


114 


HAVING AND BEING 


goods, was rich beyond measure in goods of the soul. 
Behind him, for the benefit of all future generations, 
he left a legacy whose value no person can estimate; 
and with him he carried into the other world such a 
perfected character, such sweetly singing memories of 
the good which he had done, and such a capacity for 
enjoying all heavenly things, as made him, none the 
poorer, but rather the richer, because of his severance 
from all temporal things. For him to live was Christ, 
and to die was gain. 

The way to be rich with the best kind of riches is to 
seek for perfection by following Christ. 


XII 


THE SOVEREIGNTY OF TRUTH 

" What is truth? ” —John 18: 38. 

T HERE are various ways of asking a question, 
and its meaning may largely depend on the 
manner of the questioner. The tone, the look, 
or the gesture with which the words are accompanied 
may determine their meaning, causing them to imply 
an affirmative or a negative answer, or that an answer 
of either sort is a matter of no consequence. Under 
the form of a question there may be a spirit of cyni¬ 
cism, or denial, or ridicule. 

Pilate’s question, “ What is truth? ” was evidently 
not asked with a desire to learn; because, as soon as 
he had asked it, instead of waiting for an answer, he 
went out of the room. And, although his remark was 
worded in the form of a question, it seems to have been 
really nothing more than an exclamation, and to have 
been uttered in a somewhat skeptical and contemptuous 
manner, as he went forth to the Jewish rulers who had 
brought Jesus before him, to tell them that he found 
no fault in Him. 

Jesus had spoken of Plis kingdom; and in answer to 
the question, “ Art thou a king, then? ” He had said, 
“ To this end was I born, and for this cause came I 
into the world, that I should bear witness unto the 
truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my 
voice.” But a kingdom, of truth was something of 
which Pilate had no comprehension. Truth, to his way 

115 


116 


THE SOVEREIGNTY OF TRUTH 


of thinking, was simply a matter for philosophers to 
dispute about and for visionaries to dream about—an 
abstraction, an illusory, impracticable thing, with which 
it was not worth his while to concern himself. He 
was a practical person, a man of the world. Facts 
were the things which chiefly engaged his attention. 
As for truth apart from facts—why, if Jesus desired 
to concern Himself with it, and liked to think that it 
made Him some sort of a king, Pilate had no objection. 
A king whose throne was so impalpable, and whose 
kingdom was so hard to find, was not, in his opinion, 
a dangerous character, or deserving of punishment. 
He regarded Jesus as merely a harmless visionary, and 
would have released Him if the Jewish rulers had not 
protested and threatened him. 

Pilate was a type of the civilization of the age that 
he lived in. The old religions were rapidly passing 
away and giving place to a compulsory worship of the 
Emperor, while a spirit of militarism was everywhere 
dominant, and the moral standards of society were 
correspondingly low. Power was what most people 
chiefly respected, and their motives were chiefly of a 
worldly description. There were many exceptions, of 
course; but when he said, “ What is truth ? ” in a way 
which evidently meant that it was a matter of no con¬ 
sequence, Pilate voiced what was probably the general 
feeling concerning it. 

And, apparently, that is still a very prevalent feel¬ 
ing; for there are many people even now whose con¬ 
duct plainly implies that they are of Pilate’s opinion. 
Not many of them would be likely to give expression 
to it as he did; and some of them would not acknowl¬ 
edge it even to themselves. Actions speak louder than 
words, however, and the people who show by their con- 


THE SOVEREIGNTY OF TRUTH 


117 


duct that they care but little for truth are altogether too 
numerous. If it serves their worldly ends, they use it. 
Other things being equal, they prefer it to untruth. 
But when it calls for any sacrifice of their possessions 
or their convenience, they are prone to turn away from 
it and to make compromises, if not open alliances, with 
falsehood. 

Oh, the deceptions, the hypocricies, the trickeries, the 
makeshifts, the intellectual juggleries, and the absolute 
falsehoods to which people resort rather than to tell 
the plain truth, in a great many instances! 

How often truth stands, as it were, in the market 
place, where goods are being bought and sold, or in 
some place where politicians are conferring and schem¬ 
ing, or where an editor is writing an article for his 
newspaper, or where an advertiser is preparing an 
advertisement of his business, or where a witness is 
being questioned by a legal tribunal—how often truth 
stands there, as Christ stood before Pilate, mutely ap^- 
pealing to have its heavenly authority recognized, and 
is practically thrust aside as if its claim were of no 
consequence! How often, under such conditions, 
people practically say, “ What is truth ? ” and ignore it! 

The very fact that in our courts of law a distinction 
is made between falsehood and perjury, and that, to 
some extent, the same distinction is made by the popu¬ 
lace,—a falsehood spoken under oath being regarded as 
vastly worse than an ordinary falsehood,—is an indi¬ 
cation of the little regard which people have for truth 
itself. For if people in general were as truthful as 
they ought to be, or if they attributed to the simple 
truth the degree of importance which rightly belongs 
to it, there would be no need of requiring any one to 
swear to be truthful, in violation of the Saviour’s com- 


118 


THE SOVEREIGNTY OF TRUTH 


mandment to swear not at all. We should let our yea 
be yea, and our nay be nay, without any adjurations or 
superstitious embellishments; for our obligation to tell 
the truth is no greater or less because of an oath in 
regard to it, and a falsehood is no less a falsehood be¬ 
cause no oath has been taken with reference to it. 

The excuses which people make for not telling the 
truth when they are not under oath may be more or 
less plausible, but they are not justifiable. 

Unquestionably, it is not an easy matter to be in¬ 
variably truthful. Under certain circumstances it may 
cost a person the loss of money, the loss of position, 
the loss of friendship, the loss of popularity, the loss 
of liberty, or even the loss of life itself; and under 
such circumstances the temptation to be untruthful is 
correspondingly powerful. Excuses for untruthful¬ 
ness are very easily invented; but none of them can 
bear to be tested by the teachings of Christ, or even by 
any one’s conscience when it is not perverted by selfish¬ 
ness. Every person’s conscience, if not somehow per¬ 
verted, agrees with the Bible in regard to this matter. 
It corroborates what Jesus Christ taught in regard 
to it—that truth is something whose claims are im¬ 
perative and immutable, something which we should 
always honour and love and obey, living for it, toiling 
for it, and, if necessary, dying for it. 

If it be asked why the truth should be so highly 
esteemed, the answer is that it should be esteemed, in 
the first place, for its own sake, because it is inherently 
worthy of such regard and such treatment. And if 
any one questions why the truth has such worthiness, 
or why untruth is not more worthy still if it happens 
to be more profitable, he can only be referred to truth 
itself for an answer—as he would be referred to beauty 


THE SOVEREIGNTY OF TRUTH 


119 


itself if he should question the fact of its superiority 
to ugliness, or to harmony if he should question why it 
is better than discord. If a person is so deficient in 
aesthetic perceptiveness that he cannot see that beauty 
and harmony are better than their opposites, there is no 
use in trying to prove it to him. And if a person is so 
deficient in moral perceptiveness that he does not recog¬ 
nize the superiority of truth over falsehood, there is no 
use in trying to prove it to him. One might as well try 
to show a sunset to a blind man, or play a symphony to 
a deaf man. Truth declares its own excellence, its own 
majesty and authority, to people whose moral sense is 
not dead or perverted, and they know that it deserves 
to be loved and obeyed. They know that when they 
depart from it, they deserve condemnation. They may 
say with Pilate, “ What is truth ? ” and may try by 
various subterfuges to avoid their obligations to it; 
but its demands are inexorable and there is no honour¬ 
able escape from them. We should highly esteem it, 
and be invariably loyal to it, because of its inherent 
rmhtfulness and its natural claim to our obedience-. 

o 

And, furthermore, we should do so because of the 
effect which such loyalty has on our characters, and 
because of the contrary effect of disloyalty. 

To the formation of a good character, nothing is 
more essential than the habit of truthfulness. Many 
elements enter into it, but none of them is of greater 
importance than truthfulness, and nothing else can take 
the place of it. It was one of Tennyson's sayings that 
" a truthful man generally has all of the virtues ”; and 
if by truthfulness we mean not merely abstention from 
untruthfulness, but the love of truth for its own sake 
and the consequent practice of it,—if we mean by it 
what the Bible calls “ truth in the inward parts,”—the 


120 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF TRUTH 

I 

saying bears examination remarkably well. For, in 
order to be truthful in that sense of the word, a person 
must be honest and courageous and unselfish, and 
where you find honesty and courage and unselfishness 
you are pretty sure to find purity and generosity and 
gentleness and whatsoever other qualities are lovely 
and of good report. 

A thoroughly truthful person is likely to be free 
from all meanness of character. He can be trusted in 
anything, as a general rule. But beware of the person 
who will sacrifice truth for his gain or convenience. 
He is a broken reed to lean upon. His untruthfulness 
vitiates his character and unfits him not only for being 
trusted by others but for trusting himself and respect¬ 
ing himself and enjoying a consciousness of the ap¬ 
proval of God. He may make some worldly gain by it, 
but, though he gain the whole world, he loses far more 
than he can possibly gain by it, because he loses spir¬ 
itual life, the true life of the soul. Says a familiar 
quotation, 


“ } Tis man’s perdition to be safe 
When for the truth he ought to die ”; 

which is simply a paraphrase of what Jesus declared, 
that whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but who¬ 
soever will lose his life for the gospel shall save it. 
“Safety first” is a good motto if we always give 
precedence to spiritual safety; otherwise it is often a 
cowardly plea. Be truthful, at whatsoever risk of any 
lower kind of safety. 

And now perhaps some one is mentally asking 
whether the truth should always be told, no matter 
what the circumstances, or whether, under certain cir- 


THE SOVEREIGNTY OF TRUTH 


121 


cumstances, an untruth may be allowable or even ad¬ 
visable. It is an old question, often debated, with 
many practical bearings which must be faced by us 
from time to time. 

Shall a physician, for example, tell the truth to his 
patients even in cases where their knowledge of it 
might prevent their recovery? Shall he tell the truth 
to an insane person when the effect might be dangerous 
to himself and to others? Shall a policeman tell the 
truth to a person whom he is trying to detect in a 
crime? Shall a military spy, in time of warfare, tell 
the truth to' his country’s enemies? Ought Rahab to 
have told the truth to the men who were pursuing the 
Israelite spies whose lives she saved by concealing them 
on her house-top in Jericho? May we ever tell an 
untruth to prevent people from doing an injury to 
themselves or to others ? 

I cannot answer that question any better, perhaps, 
than by calling attention to the distinction which Plato 
makes, in his “ Republic,” between what he calls a “ lie 
in the soul ” and a merely verbal untruth such as con¬ 
stitutes a fiction. He says that the former is never 
allowable, but that the latter may sometimes be used as 
a medicine; and I think that he is right about it. I 
think that there is actually such a distinction, and that, 
while the border line between an actual lie and a merely 
verbal untruth may occasionally be difficult for a person 
to determine if he has not a thoroughly truthful soul, 
there is no such difficulty for a person who has such a 
soul. If you have a thoroughly truthful soul—if you 
have what the Bible calls “ truth in the inward parts ” 
—you will have no doubt as to whether or not you are 
justified in using a verbal deception in any particular 
instance. 


122 


THE SOVEREIGNTY OF TRUTH 


There are certainly times when a suppression of 
truth is allowable. Jesus Himself suppressed the truth 
in regard to His Messiahship, and told His disciples to 
suppress it, till the proper time for proclaiming it. And 
yet there are times when the suppression of a truth 
may be equivalent to the most contemptible kind of a 
falsehood. Fiction is justifiable when it is used with¬ 
out disguise, as Jesus used it in His parables; and yet 
it may be used in such a way as to amount to a false¬ 
hood. Deception is sometimes justifiable; and yet de¬ 
ception very often amounts to a falsehood. 

We may be absolutely sure of one thing, no matter 
what the circumstances: a real lie is never justifiable, 
nor is anything allowable which amounts to a lie. And 
we need to remember that even a truth may be told in 
such a manner as to convey an erroneous and inj urious 
impression. A half-truth may be more harmful than 
an out-and-out falsehood. A bit of gossip which states 
nothing but an actual fact may have a malicious pur¬ 
pose and do incalculable injury. We cannot justify 
ourselves for injurious statements by merely proving 
their accuracy. We must be able to show that they 
were in the interests of justice and humanity. We are 
told by St. Paul that the object of Christianity is to 
bring us all to a perfect manhood, that we be no more 
children, tossed to and fro and carried about with 
every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men and 
cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive ; 
but that, speaking the truth in love, we may grow up 
into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. 
“ Speaking the truth in love ”—ah, that is the correct 
rule for us. That is the principle by which to deter¬ 
mine what we may say or may not say. Truth and 
love should go together; and he who loves both God 


THE SOVEREIGNTY OF TRUTH 


123 


and man will never lie to anybody or speak the truth in 
such a way as to do any injury. Love worketh no ill 
to his neighbour. It seeks the highest good of all, and 
uses only such methods as the Holy Spirit approves. 
Cultivate that spirit then, and let it regulate your 
thoughts and your words and your deeds. 

“ Whatever dims the sense of truth, 

Or stains thy purity, • 

Though light as breath of summer air, 

Count it as sin to thee. 

“ Preserve the tablet of thy thoughts 
From every blemish free, 

While the Redeemer’s lowly faith 
Its temple makes with thee. 

“And pray of God that grace be given 
To tread time’s narrow way; 

How dark soever it may be 
It leads to cloudless day.” 


XIII 

BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE 

“So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his 
beginning — Job 42: 12. 

T HE book of Job is a dramatic poem, dealing with 
one of the deepest problems that exercise the 
human mind—viz., what is the meaning of the 
sufferings of the innocent, and why does the Almighty 
ordain or permit them? 

It is the story of a good man who was greatly af¬ 
flicted, and whose acquaintances assumed that he was 
being punished for some sin which he had committed, 
although they were not aware of any. Some of them 
openly accused him of secret iniquity, declaring that, 
if he were really as good as he had seemed to be, God 
would not have subjected him to such terrible suffer¬ 
ing: an accusation which he indignantly denied and 
resented. No, said he, that is not the truth; why I am 
thus afflicted God only knows, but I have certainly not 
deserved it; I have lived a good life; and if I knew 
where to find Him, I would justify myself before Him; 
but when I looked for good on account of my conduct, 
then evil came to me; and, when I waited for light, 
then darkness came to me. 

It seemed to him that he was being treated unjustly 
and cruelly, and he was tempted for a while to be re¬ 
bellious towards God. His wife renounced her faith, 
and advised him to do likewise; but, notwithstanding 
his dreadful sufferings, he overcame the temptation and 

124 


BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE 


125 


humbly submitted to the divine decree which he could 
not understand. Whereupon, says the story, God re¬ 
stored him to prosperity, and gave him so much more 
that he was better off in the end than if he had never 
passed through such a sorrowful experience. What he 
had lamented as an undeserved and unmitigated evil 
proved to be a source of blessing to him, and out of 
what had seemed to be impenetrable darkness he re¬ 
ceived the light of a great faith in the goodness of God. 

In short, the event proved that his affliction had been 
a blessing in disguise; and, taken as a whole, his ex¬ 
perience illustrated a divine principle whose workings 
are often seen in the affairs of mankind. For it very 
frequently occurs that something which seemed to be 
evil is afterwards proved to be good by the results 
which it shows. Many things which seemed like curses 
are proved to have been actually blessings in disguise. 
Samson’s riddle—“ Out of the eater came forth meat, 
and out of the strong came forth sweetness ”—is con¬ 
tinually having new illustrations of its significance as 
God carries on His work in the lives of mankind, 

“From seeming evil still educing good. 

And better thence in infinite progression.” 

Consider, for example, what has often been called the 
original curse of mankind—the necessity of labour. 
We are told by certain theologians that when Adam 
was driven out of the garden of Eden, and was sen¬ 
tenced to toil for his living during the rest of his life, 
the necessity which was thus imposed upon him and his 
posterity was in the nature of a punishment on account 
of his sin; and it is often assumed that mankind would 
be much better off if that inherited necessity had not 



126 


BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE 


been incurred. It is assumed that they might always 
have lived in the garden of Eden, or that the whole 
world would be a garden, in which they would have 
nothing to do but to enjoy themselves; and it is also 
assumed that such a state of affairs would be highly 
beneficial to them. 

The incorrectness of such an assumption is very 
easily shown. For even now there are actually some 
parts of the world whose inhabitants have to work 
scarcely at all for a living, so abundantly does nature 
provide for their needs. In some tropical countries the 
natives subsist almost entirely on such fruits as the 
earth produces without cultivation, and the climate is 
such that they require no clothing excepting the very 
little which modesty calls for. Living is very easy in 
those parts of the world. But what sort of men and 
women do such conditions produce? Contrast the in¬ 
habitants of such countries with those who live where 
it is necessary to work for a living; and which are the 
better off? Which are the stronger, the healthier, the 
more intelligent and progressive, and the better able to 
enjoy themselves? Which show the higher type of 
character ? 

Or contrast the children of wealthy parents with the 
children of parents in moderate circumstances; and 
which of them, as a rule, make the best men and 
women, the most moral, the most competent, the most 
useful, the happiest? There are many exceptions, un¬ 
doubtedly; but, as a general rule, is it not true that 
those children who are not educated to feel the neces¬ 
sity of working do not become as praiseworthy or as 
useful to society as those whose circumstances oblige 
them to work for a living? Is it not a well known 
fact that a great majority of the world’s most conspic- 


BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE 


127 


nous leaders have been spurred on by the stern necessity 
of toiling for their daily bread? To have been released 
from that necessity would not have been a blessing to 
them. It would have been an evil thing for themselves 
and the world. 

The necessity of labour doubtless presses too se¬ 
verely on some people; but even then, as a rule, it 
is better than idleness, and many of those who rebel 
against it are being benefited by it far more than 
they know. 

For, in the first place, it is one of the best safeguards 
against the assaults of temptation. The familiar old 
saying that Satan always finds something for idle 
people to do originated in the common experience of 
mankind. Indeed, if we take the story as literally true, 
it was while Adam and Eve had no work to perform 
that Satan successfully tempted them and accomplished 
their downfall. Their idleness provided him with a 
favourable opportunity for persuading them to eat the 
forbidden fruit. The necessity of working has saved 
many a person from being thus beguiled into going 
astray. It is a great blessing in that respect. 

And it is also a great blessing because it contributes 
to our enjoyment of what we acquire by means of it. 
For whenever we have obtained what we desire by 
working for it, we feel that it is ours in a way which 
is better and more satisfactory than if it had come to 
us without any effort on our part. We have not only 
a pleasant consciousness of ownership in regard to it, 
but also a pleasant consciousness of success in obtain¬ 
ing it, and a pleasant feeling of self-approval on ac¬ 
count of the victory. 

And, furthermore, a life of labour is necessary for 
the development of the best kind of character. Habit- 


128 


BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE 


ual idleness causes weakness of character, as lack of 
physical exercise causes muscular flabbiness. To be 
mentally and morally and spiritually vigorous, we must 
have some useful occupation. Said Jesus to some of 
the Jews who found fault with Him, “ My Father 
worketh hitherto, and I work.” Work is one of the 
essential conditions of godliness. 

The necessity of labour, then, is not a curse, but a 
blessing. Sometimes so disguised that it looks like an 
enemy, it is really a friend to us, conducing to our 
welfare even when we complain of it. 

And so with other kinds of hardship. So with all 
of our suffering, whether it comes in the form of 
punishment for our conscious violations of the com¬ 
mandments of God, or as the result of our igno¬ 
rance, or as something which merely happens to us 
regardless of any action or lack of action on our part. 
In either case, God intends it to be a blessing to us, 
and by properly accepting it we can certainly make 
it so. 

When suffering is a punishment for some sin which 
has been committed, there is no difficulty in perceiving 
its beneficent purpose, especially when the sufferer is 
some one else than ourselves: for we can then see that 
it is intended to be corrective in its influence, admonish¬ 
ing the transgressor to repent and reform. If people 
could sin with impunity, they would keep on sinning 
eternally. But God is too good to allow them, to do so. 
And He has therefore ordained that as they sow they 
shall reap—tribulation and anguish, sooner or later, on 
every soul that doeth evil. That is a highly merciful 
and beneficent law. Such suffering is a blessing to 
those who deserve it, like the great famine which came 
to the prodigal son. They may rebel against it for a 


BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE 


129 


while, but eventually, like the prodigal, they will come 
to their senses and do that which is right in the sight 
of the Lord. Thank God for such suffering, however 
severe it may be. Thank God that, when it is neces¬ 
sary, He administers such bitter medicine to counteract 
the workings of the virus of sin. 

But a large part of people’s sufferings is not because 
of their sins. A great deal of it is owing not to their 
sinfulness, but to their ignorance; and it sometimes 
seems very strange that they must suffer as they do, 
merely because of the innocent mistakes which they 
make. But how else will they ever learn to avoid such 
mistakes? If they never suffered for their mistakes, 
they would never correct them. Such suffering is edu¬ 
cational. It trains them into intelligence and the right 
conduct of life. A burnt child dreads the fire; and a 
large part of the practical wisdom of the whole human 
race has been obtained in that way, which was the only 
possible way. It has been learned in the school of sad 
experience; and notwithstanding its sadness, we are all 
wiser and richer and happier because of it. 

And so in regard to the sufferings which sometimes 
befall us not because of our mistakes, nor because of 
our sins, but from causes for which we are in no way 
responsible, or even on account of our virtuous deeds. 
“ Many are the afflictions of the righteous,” says the 
Bible; and the experience of every generation confirms 
it. He who honestly tries to live a virtuous life is 
liable to have various afflictions, as Job had—loss of 
property, loss of health, loss of friends, and persecu¬ 
tion by wicked people whose purposes he contravenes. 
Such sufferings are especially hard to reconcile with 
the goodness and wisdom and justice of God; but, 
nevertheless, we shall eventually see that they have 


130 


BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE 


served a highly useful and beneficent purpose. Like 
Job, we have only to wait for God’s time, and out of 
the darkness which now envelops us in regard to sudi 
sufferings a glorious light will appear, either in the life 
which now is or in that which is to come. 

Already, we can easily see that many people have 
been benefited in that way. History abounds in illus¬ 
trations of the blessings which have been occasioned by 
unmerited sufferings. 

When Joseph, being hated by his envious brethren, 
was sold by them into slavery, it seemed to' be an in¬ 
justice from which no good could proceed. But in 
subsequent years, when his slavery had led to his po¬ 
litical promotion and he had become the prime minister 
of Pharaoh’s domain, he could see that what had 
seemed to be an awful misfortune had really been a 
blessing to him; and he therefore said to his guilty 
brethren, when they feared that he was about to take 
vengeance upon them, “ Fear not. As for you, ye 
thought evil against me, but God meant it for good.” 

If Walter Scott had not met with financial misfor¬ 
tune, he would never have written the Waverly novels 
and become one of the world’s most illustrious authors. 
If John Bunyan had not been unjustly imprisoned, he 
would never have produced “ The Pilgrim’s Progress.” 
If John Murray had not been so greatly afflicted that 
he fled from his native land to hide himself in a wilder¬ 
ness, he would never have founded the Universalist 
Church in this country. 

And, to pass on from all other illustrations to the 
greatest one, if Jesus Christ had not been crucified, He 
would never have become the world’s Redeemer. He 
knew that His undeserved afflictions were among the 
indispensable means by which He will draw all man- 


BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE 


131 


kind to Himself; and so, although He prayed in His 
terrible agony that, if possible, the cup might pass away 
from Him, He trustfully said, “ Thy will be done/’ 
and, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the 
cross, despising the shame, and took His place at the 
right hand of his Father on high. We are told that 
“ he was made perfect through sufferings,” and that 
“ though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by 
the things which he suffered; and, being made perfect, 
he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them 
that obey him.” 

Being made perfect—ah, that is the meaning of all 
of our sufferings. They are divinely intended for our 
spiritual benefit, and in the end they will serve the 
purpose for which God has permitted them. “ For 
whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,” and “ although 
no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but 
grievous, nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peace¬ 
able fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised 
thereby.” The way in which it profits us is set forth 
in the statement that “tribulation worketh patience; 
and patience experience; and experience hope; and hope 
maketh not ashamed ” ; or, according to a better render¬ 
ing, “ tribulation produces endurance; and endurance 
approval; and approval hope; and hope will not be 
disappointed.” 

If we had no crosses to bear, where would our 
strength of character be ? How should we develop any 
fortitude? It is endurance of hardships that strength¬ 
ens the soul. It is that which produces God’s approval, 
self-approval, and the approval of one’s fellowmen. 
And the experience which is so acquired gives its 
possessor a larger spiritual and intellectual outlook, 
lifting his thoughts and expectations above temporal 


132 BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE 

things, and inspiring him with an assurance of heav¬ 
enly things. 

We see, therefore, why it is ordained that mankind 
shall have suffering; or, if we do not see it now, we 
shall see it hereafter. We shall see that, as the Lord 
blessed the latter part of Job’s life more exceedingly, 
He will finally bless every one who endures affliction, 
by making it redound to his welfare and happiness. 

And, furthermore, we shall see why He permits the 
existence of evil. The question is often asked why, if 
God is omnipotent, He allows the existence of wicked¬ 
ness; and why, if it is due to a personal devil, He does 
not either destroy or disable the devil. And if evil and 
its dire consequences were to endure forever, there 
would be no answer to that question without dishonour¬ 
ing God. But while the problem of evil, in the present 
state of our intelligence, is not entirely clear to us, it is 
not wholly inscrutable; and the story of Job throws 
considerable light on it. For, according to that story, 
God Himself permitted Satan to afflict Job and to 
tempt him; and although Satan's motive was entirely 
blameworthy, he served a righteous purpose, so far as 
God was concerned. He assisted God to bless Job more 
abundantly than before. And so it will be with all evil. 
The very spirit of evil, which is personified as the 
devil, is always subject to God’s control, and, in spite 
of its wickedness, must serve His purpose of wisdom 
and love in the end. Goethe names it Mephistopheles, 
and calls it 

“ A portion of that power 

Which wills the had and works the good at every hour.” 

Longfellow calls it Lucifer, and says of it, in “ The 
Golden Legend,” 


BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE 


133 


“It is Lucifer, 

The son of mystery; 

And since God suffers him to he, 

He too is God’s minister, 

And labours for some good 
By us not understood 

Both of those poets hark back to the book of Job 
for their conception of the usefulness of the spirit of 
evil and of the reason why it is permitted to exist in 
the world. It does not justify evil, but it does justify 
God in permitting its existence as a means of educating 
and developing the souls of mankind. When it has 
fully served His purpose it will come to an end. No 
devil can ever separate us from our heavenly Father’s 
love and care. Neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor 
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor 
things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other 
creature, can ever separate us from it or defeat His 
purpose concerning us. The death of our material 
bodies, which many people regard as a terrible evil, will 
itself be a wonderful blessing to us as an introduction 
to the unspeakably glorious experiences of an endless 
life beyond the grave. Sometime we shall all thank 
God for it, and for all of the hardships which we have 
had to endure on this side of the grave. In the mean¬ 
time, let us accept them in a spirit of trustfulness, and 
wait for the revelation which will come by-and-by. 

“A little while, ’mid shadow and illusion, 

To strive by faith love’s mysteries to spell; 

Then read each dark enigma’s bright solution, 

Then hail sight’s verdict,—He doth all things well.” 


XIV 

ABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY 

“ The kingdom of heaven is as a man traveling into a far 
country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto 
them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to an- 
other two, and to another one; to every one according to his 
several ability; and straightway took his journey .”— Matt. 
25 : 14 , 15 - 

T HE parable from which these words are taken 
was spoken by Jesus to Plis little company of 
disciples a few days before His crucifixion. 
They were spoken with reference to His approaching 
departure, and the duty which would then devolve upon 
them of being faithful to the great work which He 
would leave in their care. He Himself was the man 
who was going to another country, and His disciples 
were the servants to whom He delivered His goods— 
the good tidings which we call the gospel, the great 
truths and sublime principles of the Christian religion, 
concerning which He said to them, just before His 
ascension, “ Go ye into all the world, and preach the 
gospel to every creature.” It was the duty of every 
one of them to execute that commission to the best of 
his ability, whatever the extent of his qualifications 
might be. 

But while that was the primary meaning of the 
parable, its application was not limited to its original 
hearers. It has a wider application, as wide as 
mankind. 


134 


ABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY 


135 


For, in the first place, nothing is more evident than 
the differences of ability which exist among men. In 
that respect, the difference among the three servants 
who' are mentioned in the parable were typical of the 
difference among people in general. Never since the 
world began have all men been equally endowed with 
ability—notwithstanding the statement of our Declara¬ 
tion of Independence, that “ all men are created free 
and equal.” They are not created equal in respect to 
ability, but conspicuously unequal. By nature and by 
circumstances they are very differently endowed. They 
are not equally talented. 

One person is born with a natural aptitude for great 
undertakings and corresponding achievements : he has 
the inherent ability, and his circumstances are all 
favourable to the exercise of it. He is the man with 
five talents—a genius, we say. He seems to be able to 
do whatsoever he wishes to. The greatest achieve¬ 
ments are possible for him; the highest positions are 
open to him, and he has only to step into them. 

Another person is born with an equal natural apti¬ 
tude, but is handicapped by circumstances which lessen 
his ability. He is like one of those persons who are 
mentioned in Gray’s Elegy—some mute, inglorious 
Milton or Cromwell, some village Hampden, whose 
circumstances prevented the glorious achievements 
which would otherwise have gained the applause of 
mankind. He is the man with two talents. 

Another is bom with no such natural aptitude. He 
is fitted for only a humble position, and his circum¬ 
stances accord with his natural outfit. Even with his 
best endeavours, he can do but little in comparison with 
the others^ who have been mentioned, He is the man 
with one talent. 


136 ABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY 

And besides those three classes there are a great 
many others, of all possible gradations. A scale which 
would indicate all of the different abilities of mankind 
would have to be so finely marked that we should need 
a powerful microscope in order to read it, or so long 
that we should need a telescope in order to see the 
further end of it. God alone could perceive all of its 
countless gradations. He knows the real ability of 
every one of His children. We know only in part, but 
we can easily see that some have more ability than 
others have. The fact is so patent that no one can be 
blind to it. 

As to the cause of the inequality, there are different 
opinions. A part of it is evidently due to the laws of 
heredity. Children inherit from their ancestors not 
only different kinds but different degrees of ability. 
Every one of us is to a great extent the product of 
ancestral influences extending back for many ages. We 
are largely what our progenitors made us to be by their 
personal characteristics and by the lives which they led. 
That is a scientific fact of no little importance, es¬ 
pecially as the characters of our own descendants will 
be largely determined by it. If we live irregular, 
foolish, and sinful lives, they will suffer the conse¬ 
quences; and if any of them, as a result of our folly 
and sinfulness, are bom with feeble constitutions, de¬ 
ficient intelligence, or evil propensities, neither they 
nor God will be to blame for it. The law of heredity 
is a good law, and it works for good if we use it law¬ 
fully. They who abuse it have themselves alone to 
blame, and they who suffer from abuse of it on the part 
of their ancestors should blame only their ancestors. 

But while such differences are partly explained by 
the law of inheritance, that is not the only cause of 


ABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY 137 

them. There are differences which require some other 
explanation. Children of the same parents, brought up 
in the same household, sometimes differ in ability as 
widely as if one of them were the child of a barbarian 
and the other were a descendant of highly civilized an¬ 
cestors. Such differences are not explainable by any 
materialistic theory. Physical science is unable to 
account for them, and we can only say that the Creator 
Himself has ordained them. Apparently, He never in¬ 
tended that all mankind should have exactly the same 
ability, any more than that they should have exactly the 
same physiognomy. Variety seems to be a part of His 
plan in regard to us, no less than in regard to the lower 
orders of creation. He Who has made one beautiful 
flower to differ from another in shape and in colour, 
one tree from another in size and in fruitfulness, one 
animal from another in strength and intelligence, one 
star from another in brightness and glory, has also 
made human beings to differ in ability. He has made 
no provision for a dead level of uniformity among 
human beings, either as to their ability, or as to their 
attainments, or as to their acquisition of material 
things: which is equivalent to saying that He has made 
no provision for the success of those theorists who 

advocate such uniformity. 

There is no warrant in any of the teachings of Christ 
for the kind of socialism which desires to make all men 
alike. They cannot be made alike in ability or attain¬ 
ments. Other things being equal, the man with five 
talents will always get ahead of the man with but two, 
and the man with two talents will always get ahead of 
the man with but one, so far as their respective acquisi¬ 
tions are concerned. That is according to God s law. 
It is the law of the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus de- 


138 


ABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY 


dared. No human law* can do away with it. As long 
as human nature remains as it is, some persons will 
have more ability than others, and will consequently 
make greater gains, and sooner or later have greater 
possessions. If that is unjust, the injustice must 
continue. 

But it is not fundamentally unjust or unwise. No 
doubt, there is much human injustice connected with 
the inequalities which exist among men, especially in 
regard to their worldly possessions. No doubt, some 
of them have more, and some less, than they ought to 
have. No doubt, some of them take a selfish advantage 
of their ability to domineer over weaker persons, op^- 
pressing and robbing them. No doubt, there is great 
need of reform in regard to such matters, and human 
laws may do much to remove the injustice. Let us do 
what we can to obtain such laws, and to guarantee to 
every one a proper recompense for his labour. But 
let us not complain of the fact that people differ in 
ability, or that some of them get more than others, as 
long as they get it by honest methods. That is to 
complain against Him who created us. 

If God required the same attainments or achieve¬ 
ments from all men, there might be some justification 
for complaint and despondency. If He required as 
much from the man with one talent as from him who 
has five, the former might have sufficient reason for 
complaining. But such is really not the case. God 
requires no more of any person than that person him¬ 
self has the power to do. He measures every one’s 
responsibility by the ability which he possesses. If I 
have but one talent, He requires from me, in the way 
of attainments, only a fifth of what He requires from 
him who has five. To whom much is given, of him 


ABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY 


139 


much is required; and they who are disgruntled at the 
smallness of their ability should consider that the in¬ 
crease for which they sigh would bring a correspond¬ 
ingly greater responsibility, so that the balance would 
be exactly the same after all. It was no easier for the 
man with five talents to do his full duty than for him 
who had received but two, or than it would have been 
for the faithless servant who had received only one. 

People are apt to ignore this fact, and therefore to 
envy one another. The poor envy the rich, and the 
weak envy the strong, for their greater ability. O, 
they say, if we only had such means as they have, how 
much easier our work would be, and how much happier 
our lives would be! And sometimes, on the other 
hand, the rich and the strong envy the poor and the 
weak for their smaller responsibility. The rich man, 
loaded down with cares, and tormented with a multi¬ 
plicity of vexatious responsibilities, envies the poor 
man for his freedom from all such anxieties. The 
strong man who perhaps but yesterday was exulting 
over his feeble neighbour is today obliged to shoulder 
a musket and risk his life on the field of battle, while 
his feeble neighbour is left at home; and now he envies 
the very weakness which he used to despise. And so 
goes the world—one envying another for his greater 
ability, or for his lesser liability; whereas, if they would 
duly consider the matter, both of them would see that 
there is no justification for envy on either side. God 
treats all of us impartially in the duties which He lays 
upon us, asking no more and no less of any person than 
He has given him. power to bear and perform. 

And He also treats all alike in the final reward which 
Lie gives to them if they do their duty equally well. 
According to the parable, the man of two talents who 



uo 


ABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY 


had gained other two received precisely the same re¬ 
ward as the man of five talents who had gained other 
five; and if the man of but one talent had made a good 
use of it, he would also have received the same reward. 
To him, as to each of the others, his lord would have 
said, “ Well done, thou good and faithful servant; 
enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” He would have 
had the same recompense, the same heavenly blessed¬ 
ness. And so it will surely be with every one who is 
faithful to what is required of him. God is not a hard 
master, reaping where He has not sown, and gathering 
where He has not strewed. He gives us the ability to 
do what He requires of us; and when we do it, He 
rewards us exceedingly abundantly, especially when we 
do it as servants of Christ. 

Every person who is faithful to the teachings of 
Christ in the use which he makes of his personal pos¬ 
sessions is rewarded with the kind of joy for the sake 
of which Jesus endured the cross, and to which He 
referred when He said to His disciples, “ These things 
have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in 
you, and that your joy might be full.’’ 

The joy of Jesus Christ was the kind of joy which 
always comes from a sense of faithfulness, from a con¬ 
sciousness of God’s approval, and from a realization 
that by means of one’s labours other people have been 
benefited and the perfect coming of God’s Kingdom on 
earth has been hastened. 

Is there any greater joy than that? Is there any 
other to compare with it? Do we not all know, as a 
matter of experience, that our noblest and most abiding 
joy has come from what we have done for others 
rather than from what we have done for ourselves, 
from what we have given rather than from what we 


ABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY 


141 


have received, from the sacrifices which we have made 
in the cause of righteousness and humanity rather than 
from the promotion of our personal comfort? 

Temporarily, we may seem to get more enjoyment 
from selfishness than from unselfishness, from receiv¬ 
ing than from giving, from pandering to our worldly 
impulses than from seeking for the Kingdom of God 
and His righteousness. But, in fact, we do not; and, 
in the long run, our own experience contradicts such 
an assumption. The pleasure which we obtain by what 
we expend for ourselves quickly passes away; but that 
which comes as the result of our benefactions to others 
never passes away. We are both better and happier 
for it as long as we live. It is a heavenly treasure, 
which death itself cannot destroy. 

If, then, you would have the noblest and most abid¬ 
ing of joys, regard yourself as one of the servants of 
Christ, and your possessions as talents to be faithfully 
used in the work of His Kingdom. Imitate his un¬ 
selfishness, His devotion to the cause of true religion 
and humanity. Remember that your responsibility cor¬ 
responds with your ability, and, whether you are 
greatly or only moderately gifted, be absolutely faith¬ 
ful. “ Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it,” like the 
servants at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee, and 
His joy will remain in you, and your joy will be full. 


XV 

TRANSFORMATION BY CONTEMPLATION 


" We all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory 
of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to 
glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord ”—II Cor. 3: 18. 

A MONG Nathaniel Hawthorne’s stories there is 
one which is called “ The Great Stone Face,” 
It was probably suggested by the rocky forma¬ 
tion which is known as the Profile among the White 
Mountains, for it relates to a similar work of Nature— 
a wonderful mass of rocks closely resembling a human 
countenance, far up on the precipitous side of a moun¬ 
tain, overlooking a fertile and beautiful valley in¬ 
habited by many people. According to the story, the 
expression of the Face was very noble and benevolent, 
“as if it were the glow of a vast warm heart that 
embraced all mankind in its affections ”; and there was 
a tradition in the valley that a child would sometime 
be born there who would grow up into the likeness of 
that wonderful image and be the greatest and most 
beneficent man of his time. 

Among those who devoutly believed the tradition, 
and who hoped for its fulfilment within their own life¬ 
time, was a boy by the name of Ernest, who had learned 
it at his mother’s knee. He lived in full view of the 
Great Stone Face; and whenever he beheld its majestic 
outlines he thought of the story which his mother had 
told him, and wished that the great, good man would 
come. Often, when the toil of the day was over, he 

142 


TRANSFORMATION BY CONTEMPLATION 143 

would sit gazing at the Face as the sunset illumined it, 
and would imagine that it smiled upon him. And so, 
year after year, as he grew up to manhood, he loved 
that Face more and more, and was filled with an ardent 
longing for the coming of the benefactor whose own 
face would resemble it. 

After a while it became rumored that such a man 
had appeared—a man by the name of Mr. Gathergold. 
He had been born in the valley, and had recently re¬ 
turned to it from a far distant city where he had some¬ 
how accumulated a great deal of money. But when 
Ernest beheld him, he immediately saw that the people 
were mistaken concerning him, because there was no 
resemblance between him and the Face. They only 
imagined that he resembled it, because the glamour of 
his money temporarily blinded them; and by-and-by 
they also perceived that there was no similarity, be¬ 
cause, instead of spending his great wealth as a public 
benefactor, he spent it for himself alone; and so the 
glamour passed away. 

A few years afterwards, there came to the valley a 
military hero, and then a great statesman, and then a 
great poet, each of whom had been born there, and 
concerning each of whom it was said for a while that 
he resembled the Face and was surely the benefactor 
whom the people had been waiting for. But in each 
case the illusion wore off as before; and the people still 
waited; and Ernest still gazed at the Face, day by day, 
and went about his humble duties, and did whatever 
good he could, till he became an old man and was 
known far and wide for his goodness and wisdom, so 
that people often went to him for advice, and for com¬ 
fort, and for an explanation of the New Testament, 
which he somehow made plainer to them than any one 


144 TRANSFORMATION BY CONTEMPLATION 


else. And one evening, as the sun was setting, while 
he was thus talking at an out-of-doors meeting in a 
place where the Great Stone Face was visible, the people 
all at once perceived that in him the ancient prophecy 
had found its fulfilment; for both his features and his 
expression exactly resembled those of the Face far 
above them. Little by little, without being aware of 
it, ever since his childhood’s days, he had been taking 
on a physical likeness to the Face which he had so lorlg 
and so lovingly looked upon, while his character had 
become imbued with the traits which it symbolized. 

When Hawthorne wrote that charming story, he may 
not have been thinking of any part of the Bible; but if 
he had intended to write a story which would illustrate 
the great truth which is set forth in my text, he could 
not have done it more successfully. For as Ernest, 
according to the story, gradually came to resemble the 
Great Stone Face by habitually beholding it and con¬ 
sidering its significance and conforming his conduct to 
the character which it symbolized, so, according to my 
text, the disciples of Jesus Christ are transformed into 
His likeness by fixing their thoughts and affections on 
the glory of His character and trying to live in con¬ 
formity with it. The story is based on the same prin¬ 
ciple which the apostle sets forth, and the principle is 
a true one. It is not a mere poetic fancy. There is 
nothing more real, or more practical, or more generally 
observable; for it is a principle whose applications are 
very numerous and various—the principle of trans¬ 
formation by beholding and reflecting. 

Human nature, in fact, is remarkably plastic. It 
can be moulded by its associations, for good or for ill. 
All of us are being moulded for better or worse, 
whether we know it or not, every day that we live, by 


TRANSFORMATION BY CONTEMPLATION 145 


the influence of the sort of things to which we give our 
attention; and especially so if we regard them with 
favour. Even if we regard them with aversion, there 
may be a tendency for us to be influenced by them. 
Things which we originally dislike may become so 
familiar to us that, unless we are very careful, we shall 
cease to dislike them and shall be assimilated to them. 

" Vice is a monster of so frightful mien 
As, to he hated, needs hut to he seen; 

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.” 

But we are especially susceptible to the influence of 
those things which we habitually regard with a favour¬ 
able feeling. It is by them that we are most easily and 
rapidly moulded. 

That is true, to some extent, of our physical features. 
Our countenances are liable to be changed more or less 
by the nature of the things which we habitually contem¬ 
plate. Hawthorne’s idea that, in course of time, by 
gazing as Ernest did on the Great Stone Face, a person 
would gradually take on a very similar expression, is 
not so unreasonable as some may suppose. That would 
probably be the actual effect on some persons who have 
an exceptionally sensitive nature. It is told of a cele¬ 
brated caricaturist that he could not draw continuously 
for more than two hours, because his own features had 
so strong an inclination to be twisted into the likeness 
of whatever he was drawing that after a little while 
his face ached. 

Why, even the kind of business in which a man is 
engaged may gradually change his countenance and 
cause him to take on a characteristic expression. Who 
of us has not occasionally met with such instances ? 


146 TRANSFORMATION BY CONTEMPLATION 


And if people are subject to such physical changes, 
due to the nature of the things which they contemplate, 
much more are they likely to acquire mental resem¬ 
blances. The body changes but slowly. It is made of 
sluggish materials and can be transformed only as the 
mind is first influenced and affected. But the mind is 
more directly and quickly susceptible, and possesses a 
much greater aptitude to accord with its associations, 
or, in scientific language, to conform to its environ¬ 
ments. And so it often comes to pass, as a matter of 
common observation, that pupils who are under the 
same teacher for a number of years come to have the 
same mental characteristics that he has, the same habits 
of thought, the same methods of speech, the same gen¬ 
eral style. They are in danger of imitating his man¬ 
nerisms. And that is not merely because of the in¬ 
struction which he gives to them. It is because of his 
unconscious influence, which tends to assimilate them 
unto himself. While they are looking to him for in¬ 
struction they receive something else, which may be of 
no less importance to them. They receive an impres¬ 
sion which may modify their habits of thought for a 
lifetime and be a powerful factor in shaping their con¬ 
duct long after they have forgotten nearly all that he 
said to them. 

If you visit the great galleries of paintings in Europe 
and make a study of their contents, you soon learn to 
distinguish not only the works of the few supreme 
masters, but also those of their pupils, belonging to the 
different schools which were due to their influence. 
You can soon recognize the work of artists who be¬ 
longed to the school of Titian, of Corregio, of Murillo, 
of Rembrandt, of Rubens, or of any of the other great 
world-famous masters; and you know that the resem- 


TRANSFORMATION BY CONTEMPLATION 147 

\ 

blance between their works and the works of the mas¬ 
ters is owing to the diligence with which they had 
studied the works of the masters. By steadfastly be¬ 
holding the glorious artistry of Titian, and reflecting 
it in their own works to the best of their ability, the 
members of his school became more and more like him 
in artistic accomplishments, till some of their pictures 
could hardly be told from his own. And so in regard 
to the other great masters. Their genius had a trans¬ 
forming influence, intellectually and aesthetically, on the 
artists who looked up to them/—an influence which 
assimilated them unto themselves. 

In the moral realm also the same principle holds, and 
is perhaps even more operative than anywhere else. 
Indeed, the tendency for people to become good or bad 
according to the company which they keep, and the 
character of the things which they contemplate, is so 
evident as to be proverbial. Evil communications cor¬ 
rupt good manners. Noble associations produce good 
manners. He who habitually associates with good 
people, or who takes as his model a person of high 
character, or who forms for himself a high moral ideal 
of which he frequently thinks with aspiration and long¬ 
ing, will be assimilated thereto in his own moral char¬ 
acter. So too with him who reads good books and 
who witnesses lofty and sublime exhibitions. While 
he who keeps immoral company, or who glorifies im¬ 
moral people, or who amuses himself with disgraceful 
stories or by witnessing plays of a similar character, 
cannot fail to be morally injured by it. He will be 
conformed to the likeness of what he thus contem¬ 
plates, reflecting it more and more in his own moral 
character. 

Therein is one of the principal dangers of electing 


148 TRANSFORMATION BY CONTEMPLATION 


immoral men to office. It is not merely because they 
are likely to do immoral things, but because by electing 
them we exalt their immorality in the sight of the 
people and practically honour it. Many centuries ago 
the Athenian orator Aeschines admonished his fellow 
citizens in regard to that matter. “ For you know,” 
said he, “ it is not music, nor the gymnasium, nor the 
schools, that mould young men; it is much more the 
public proclamations, the public examples. If you take 
one whose life has no high purpose, one who mocks at 
morals, and crown him in the theatre, every boy who 
sees it is corrupted. Beware, therefore, Athenians; re¬ 
member that the character of a city is determined by the 
character of the men whom it crowns.” That is good 
advice for these days—as good for the people of this 
country in the twentieth century as for the inhabitants 
of Athens before the advent of Christ. 

Human nature is imitative; it is likely to assume a 
likeness to what it admires and glorifies. And if we 
ourselves would be noble, if we would progress towards 
perfection and come at last to the full development of 
our divine possibilities, it behooves us to look at noble 
things, letting our thoughts dwell upon noble ideals, and 
contemplating things of an elevating character ; and 
most of all it behooves us to- study the life and teach¬ 
ings of the Lord Jesus Christ, looking steadfastly unto 
Him as the model of perfection and trying to reflect 
His spirit in our dealings with our fellowmen. There 
is nothing else so ennobling as such communion with 
Him. That is confessed by the ablest of those who 
refuse to admit His divinity. Renan has declared that 
“ in Jesus was condensed all that is good and elevated 
in our nature ”; and John Stuart Mill is responsible for 
the statement that “ even now it would not be easy, 


TRANSFORMATION BY CONTEMPLATION 149 


even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of 
the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete 
than to endeavour so to live that Christ would approve 
our life.” Most assuredly it would not; and for those 
who are not unbelievers the habit of fixing the mind’s 
eye on His life and His teachings has a salutary effect 
which is beyond computation. 

That is one of the reasons why every one who can 
do so should attend church every Sunday—not merely 
to hear a sermon, but to look unto Jesus and to con¬ 
sider the glory of His life and His teachings. It would 
not be far from true to say that the principal value of 
any church service is in the opportunity which it gives 
for beholding Christ’s glory, and for being thereby 
changed into a closer resemblance to Him. No matter 
whether the sermon is a great or a small one; no mat¬ 
ter whether it conveys any new information or simply 
tells the old truths which you have heard from your 
childhood; if it holds up Jesus Christ to you and helps 
you to behold His glory, or if the entire service does 
so, it is exceedingly valuable, and you should avail 
yourself of it. 

We need at least one day of the week for especially 
turning our thoughts towards Christ, and towards all 
that His glorious ministry signifies. The world has 
six days of the seven in which to fashion us. I hank 
God for the seventh one, with its blessed opportunity 
of looking away from earthly to heavenly things, from 
the things that are seen to the things that are unseen, 
from the imperfections of mankind to the perfection of 
Christ. God help us all to become more like Him, day 
by day, as the years go by, 

“ L,ike the stained web which whitens in the sun , 

Made pure by being purely shone upon 


XVI 


THE HOUSE OF GOD 

“ This is none other, hut the house of God, and this is the 
gate of heaven ”— Gdn. 28 : 17 . 

I N his poem which is entitled “ An Essay on Man,” 
Pope portrays 

“ The poor Indian, whose untutored mind 
Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind ”; 

and what is thus poetically said of the Indian is true 
of the uncivilized races in general. Knowing nothing 
of modern science, they have very crude ideas of God 
and of His relation to the forces of the material uni¬ 
verse. They believe that somehow this world is the 
abode of Divinity, that Nature is the abode of the 
supernatural, and that behind all of its manifold visible 
forms there is something personal and invisible which 
is worthy of worship. 

That seems to have been the primitive belief of man¬ 
kind, out of which their various mythologies grew. 
They had not risen to a belief in the unity of God, but 
they believed that in each of the conspicuous aspects of 
Nature there was a personal element; so that whether 
they looked at the stars, or the clouds, or the mountains, 
or the meadows, or the rivers, or the sea, or the forest, 
or the flowers, they beheld the dwelling place or the 
agency of some special divinity whom it behooved them 
to acknowledge, respect, and adore. 

We have done away with all that. No faith have we 

150 


THE HOUSE OF GOD 


151 


in Dryads and Naiads and fairies, in Jupiter or Min¬ 
erva or Juno or Neptune. We glibly explain the phe¬ 
nomena of Nature, not as due to the activities of 
different divinities, but as the resultant of certain great 
natural forces, in accordance with certain great natural 
laws. We are wiser than the people of primitive times. 
We have outgrown their mythologies, and have none of 
our own. We know that Nature is more complicated 
than they supposed it to be, and we take a scientific 
view of it. We know that this world is only a very 
small part of the universe, by whose stupendous forces 
it is carried along as a grain of sand is carried along 
by a simoon or a cyclone; and we are familiar with the 
working of such great natural causes as the attraction 
of gravitation, and chemical affinity, and the struggle 
for existence, and the survival of the fittest. 

And by as much as Nature has become larger and 
more complicated to their intelligence, and the reign of 
law has become more evident, it has become harder for 
some people to believe in God's nearness to them, or 
even in His existence as a personal Being. They are 
prone to think of Him as being only afar off, if He is 
anywhere, or as being only an abstraction, or a personi¬ 
fication of great natural principles, or a philosophical 
term of no practical consequence. That He is really a 
personal Being, inhabiting this world and controlling 
its phenomena, does not easily accord with their habit 
of thought. They regard that belief as outgrown and 
untenable, belonging properly enough to the infancy 
of the race, but not suited to full grown intellectual 
manhood. 

But, notwithstanding everything that modern science 
has revealed to us, there is no good reason for not be¬ 
lieving as firmly as ever not only in the personality but 


152 


THE HOUSE OF GOD 


in the nearness of God. On the contrary we now have 
additional reason for believing that He is a personal, 
intelligent Being, and that, as the apostle said to the 
Athenians, “ He is not far from any one of us.” 

Of course, we cannot believe that His presence is 
confined to this world, or that His dwelling is in the 
sky only a few miles away, or that He has a bodily 
form, or that He manages the forces of the visible 
universe as a master mechanic manages the machinery 
of a factory. We cannot go back to the ancient myth¬ 
ology, or to such conceptions of Deity as were held and 
are still held by uncivilized people. But while we hold 
fast to our scientific attainments, and to the vastly 
larger conception of God which they necessitate, we 
can believe all the more reasonably in His personal 
character and His spiritual activity in all parts of the 
universe. We can believe in His immanence—that He 
is everywhere present, the indwelling life and soul of 
the material universe—and that, wherever His children 
are, He is especially present and active with His love 
and His helpfulness, as a mother is more present, so 
far as her heart is concerned, in the nursery where her 
children are than in any other part of a magnificent 
mansion. The importance of a room does not depend 
on its size, nor does the importance of a world, in the 
Lord’s estimation. So far as His existence is con¬ 
cerned, He is present in this world the same as every¬ 
where else; and so far as His affection and providential 
care are concerned, He is much nearer to us than to 
any uninhabited part of the universe. 

There was truth in the primitive belief of mankind 
that this world is the abode of Deity; and Jacob was 
right when, awaking on the hill-top at Bethel, he said, 
“ Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not. 


THE HOUSE OF GOD 


153 


This is none other but the house of God and this is the 
gate of heaven.” It was really the house of God; for 
the entire world belongs to Him, and He inhabits every 
portion of it. It is only one of the rooms, and a com¬ 
paratively small one, in our Father’s house of many 
mansions; but it is actually one of them and a very 
important one. Let us never forget that precious truth 
nor suffer ourselves to be blinded to it by any scientific 
reasoning. It were a pity if in that respect we should 
allow the poor Indian or our primitive ancestors to 
have so great an advantage over us. If we were to 
sacrifice either, it would be a great deal better for us 
to sacrifice our boasted science than to sacrifice our 
Christian faith in the existence and personality and 
nearness of God. For we need our faith in God even 
more than our science ; and only as we interpret the 
facts of science by means of such faith can we under¬ 
stand their deepest meaning and their real relation to 
one another, or make the best and highest use of them. 
We need our faith in order to account in a rational 
manner for the wonderful phenomena which Nature 
presents to us. 

A person who should visit the Windsor Castle in 
England, without knowing its history or ever having 
examined any similar structure, might be puzzled by a 
great many of the things which he would see there—by 
the vast extent of the palace and its numerous annexes, 
by the number of its rooms, by the length of its gal¬ 
leries, by its walls and its towers, by the splendour of 
its furnishings, and by the multitude of its portraits 
and magnificent paintings—as he was led along through 
the apartments of the wonderful edifice. Fie would be 
constantly saying, What meaneth this? But let him 
come to the throne room, and be told that the whole 


THE HOUSE OF GOD 


154 

stupendous structure was built for the British sovereign 
several centuries ago, and that it has been the residence 
of such a personage from then until now, and he will 
no longer be puzzled by its extensiveness or its furnish¬ 
ings. He will have the key to the mystery; and, while 
he will still admire, he will no longer be bewildered by 
it. And precisely so when we realize that this won¬ 
derful world, instead of being the result of chance, or 
of blind force undirected by any intelligence, is the 
abode of Divinity, created and inhabited by the Ruler 
of all things. If it is really the house of God, that 
explains its phenomena; and with that fact to enlighten 
us we can see a higher meaning in them, a profounder 
and tenderer and more sacred significance, than any 
scientist can discern without that fact to enlighten him. 

To begin with, it explains the marvelous order which 
exists in the universe, extending throughout the entire 
domain from the least to the greatest of all things that 
we see. Nothing is outside of the control of some law; 
and the laws of Nature always harmonize. They never 
conflict with one another, but work with perfect regu¬ 
larity and in perfect accord,—which is exactly what 
we might expect if this world is the abode of God. If 
God is immanent in Nature, the soul of all of its phe¬ 
nomena, of course everything will be done in an orderly 
way, and of course there will be a reign of law; for 
God is not the author of confusion, but of harmony 
and regularity and progress and peace. When, there¬ 
fore, the scientist calls our attention to such regularity, 
he helps us to believe in the presence of God. When 
my attention is called to such marvelous order, I say to 
myself, surely the Lord is in this place, for only He 
could create and maintain such a system. 

Or consider the wonderful variety which exists in 


THE HOUSE OF GOD 


155 


the world—no two landscapes just alike, no two ani¬ 
mals just alike, no two* flowers, no two faces. If a 
human artist tries to depict many different faces, un¬ 
less he copies actual faces, he will be likely to find it 
very difficult to give a distinctive form and expression 
to each of them. But Nature knows no such difficulty. 
There is infinite diversity, in the clouds, in the sunsets, 
in the trees, in the flowers, in the birds, in the insects, 
in humanity, in everything. Whence comes it unless 
God is here? If this is indeed the house of God, whose 
resources are infinite, that explains the variety. It is 
exactly what might be expected in the house of such a 
one as He. 

And so with the marvelous perfection, extending to 
even the slightest details, which is exhibited in the 
scales of an insect’s wing no less than in the mighty 
orbits wherein the planets keep their courses. No man 
can make a perfect thing, but Nature is full of perfect 
things. We think it a wonder, and so it is, if with the 
aid of a microscope a man engraves the Lord’s prayer 
on the head of a pin; but in the eye of an insect, with 
its numerous facets, hundreds of beautiful pictures are 
simultaneously imprinted, each of them accurately 
representing what the insect beholds. Surely this is the 
house of God, for no one else can accomplish such 
wonderful things. 

Or how else shall we account for the evidences of 
design with which Nature abounds—for the wonderful 
adaptation of different things to each other, and the 
arrangements for perpetuating the various species? 

In his interesting books on the life and habits of in¬ 
sects, the French scientist Fabre has described the evi¬ 
dences of intelligence and of wonderful planning for 
the future by which some of them provide for the life 


156 


THE HOUSE OF GOD 


of their offspring—telling what seems to be an almost 
incredible story in regard to what their instinct impels 
them to do; and he rightly attributes it not to any blind 
impulse, nor to any merely natural process of develop¬ 
ment from unintelligent protoplasm, but to the mind of 
their Creator, Who gives them what we call their in¬ 
stinct as a means of carrying out His own purpose con¬ 
cerning them. The story of insect life and of what we 
call instinct in the animal world bears exceedingly in¬ 
structive testimony to the fact that this world is the 
house of God, and that He is not very far away from 
any of us. 

Consider also the fertilization of flowers. By what 
nicely adjusted arrangements that result is produced— 
the pollen being carried from the stamens to the pistils 
sometimes by the force of the wind, sometimes by the 
force of gravity, and sometimes by the insects which 
go from flower to flower in search of the honey which 
the flowers contain! In obtaining the honey the insects 
deposit the pollen; and, to secure that result, not only 
some of the flowers but also some of the insects are 
constructed in very remarkable ways—the curious 
formation of some of the insects being exactly adapted 
to that of the flowers in order that each may survive. 
If devised by human beings the different arrangements 
for that purpose would indicate great intelligence. 

And so with the different arrangements for the dis¬ 
tribution of seeds—some of them being distributed by 
the wind, some by the streams, some by the birds, some 
by the squirrels, some by the forcible explosion of seed 
pods, and some by various other agencies. 

John Burroughs, in one of his interesting essays, 
has called attention to the fact that after a dandelion 
has blossomed it lowers itself and lies close to the 


THE HOUSE OF GOD 


157 


ground while its seeds are maturing, but that as soon 
as they are matured it raises its head above the grass, 
no matter how high the grass may grow, in order that 
the wind may strike it and scatter the seeds. He calls 
it “ a curious instance of foresight in a weed.” Nature 
is full of such foresight, such evidences of intelligence, 
such adaptation of means to ends. But to whom, or to 
what, does the intelligence belong? Has the weed a 
mind of its own? Has it the power of reasoning? 
Or is it simply the instrument of a higher intelligence, 
which inhabits this world and controls its phenomena? 
Surely, such remarkable adjustments are not the result 
of blind chance, and they are not self-created. If this 
world is God’s house, that explains all such things. 

Verily, it is the house of God; and the more care¬ 
fully we examine it, and look into its mysteries, and 
discover the laws and principles which underlie its 
phenomena, the more we shall be impressed with a con¬ 
sciousness of God’s presence, unless something has in¬ 
terfered with our spiritual perceptiveness; and the more 
devout we shall feel when we think what a wonderful 
world we live in; and the longer we live in it, if we 
live as we ought to live, the more we shall find it to be 
a doorway to the Kingdom of heaven. 

May God help us to realize His continual nearness! 
May He speak to us day by day, as He spoke to Jesus 
of Nazareth, through the flowers of the field, and the 
birds of the air, and the winds, and the trees, and all 
of Nature’s forms and forces. And while we thus 
commune with Him, may we grow into His likeness, 
till, leaving these earthly scenes behind us, we enter 
our eternal home. 


XVII 

THE BOW IN THE CLOUD 


“And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I 
make between me and you and every living creature that is 
with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bozo in the 
cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me 
and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a 
cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, 
and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and 
you and every living creature of all flesh .”— Gen. 9:12-15. 

T HE primitive human being was both childlike 
and poetical. He was not much of a scientist. 
Having no telescopes or microscopes or colleges 
or libraries, he interpreted the facts of nature according 
to his own feelings and intuitions and theories. Hence 
the myths and the legends which have come down to us 
from antiquity, including this beautiful story in regard 
to the rainbow. 

We, living in the twentieth century, of course know 
a great deal which the early Hebrews did not know. 
We know that rainbows must have existed as long ago 
as there were raindrops and vapour and sunlight, and 
we can give a strictly natural explanation of their 
origin. But the early Hebrews could not; and so they 
regarded the rainbow as a special creation, made for 
the first time at the cessation of a great flood which 
had occurred long ago, to be the token of a covenant 
between God and mankind that there should never be 
such an awful occurrence again. They assumed that 
He had created it as a reminder, both for Himself and 

158 


THE BOW IN THE CLOUD 


159 


for them, of a blessed promise which He had then 
made in regard to that matter. 

Childlike, poetical, unscientific! Undoubtedly so; 
but profoundly religious, and beautifully significant of 
a great spiritual truth to which we ought to give heed. 

For while we cannot now believe that the rainbow is 
a special token that God will never allow another flood 
to occur, or that He needs anything to remind Him of 
His covenants or His promises, it is true that He has 
made a blessed covenant with mankind, and that He 
has given us certain precious promises of which a rain¬ 
bow, spanning the cloudy sky, is an exceedingly beau¬ 
tiful and appropriate symbol. 

Not every material cloud is accompanied by a rain¬ 
bow; but together with every moral or spiritual cloud 
there is that which a rainbow symbolizes. Every such 
cloud has its bow of promise, its divinely appointed 
token of mercy and blessedness. 

Consider, to begin with, that sort of a cloud which 
settles down by degrees over every one who outlives 
early manhood or womanhood—the cloud of advancing 
years and approaching old age—the cloud of which the 
author of Ecclesiastes lias said, “ Remember now thy 
Creator in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days 
come, and the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I 
have no pleasure in them; or ever the sun and the moon 
and the stars be darkened, and the clouds return after 
the rain.” 

Some of you are already aware of that cloudiness. 
You have outlived the vigour and the pleasures of 
youth. You are not as sprightly as you were. Your 
muscles are not as elastic and firm as they used to be. 
You cannot run as fast, and you get tired more easily. 
Your appetite and your digestion are not quite as reli- 


160 


THE BOW IN THE CLOUD 


able, and you have to be more careful in regard to 
your food. Perhaps your sight or your hearing is 
somewhat impaired, and possibly you have not as many 
teeth as you used to have. You no longer take pleasure 
in baseball or football or skating or dancing, and there 
are ever so many things which young people enjoy into 
the enjoyment of which you no longer can enter. The 
morning of your life has passed. The afternoon, or 
possibly the evening, has come, with its shadows, its 
burdens, its deprivations, its sorrows, its memories of 
other days whose brightness can return no more. Your 
life will henceforth be clouded over so far as the special 
pleasures of that period are concerned; and, indeed, 
even your memory of a great deal which you once 
knew and enjoyed is now exceedingly dim or quite 
hidden from view. In the depths of your subcon¬ 
sciousness it may still be preserved; but, so far as your 
consciousness is concerned, it is under a cloud. 

Well, what of that? Shall we spend the latter part 
of our lives in lamenting that the pleasures of youth 
pass away? Shall we sit down under the cloud and 
complainingly bemoan ourselves, as Elijah sat down 
under the juniper tree? Shall we not rather look for 
the bow in that cloud, and rejoice in the compensation 
which it presents to our view ? As Wordsworth says, 

“ What though the radiance zvhich was once so bright 
Be now forever taken from my sight, 

Though nothing can bring back the hour 
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flozverf 
We will grieve not, rather find 
Strength in what remainstbehind; 

In the primal sympathy 

Which, having been, must ever be; 

In the soothing thoughts that spring 


THE BOW IN THE CLOUD 


161 


Out of human suffering; 

In the faith that looks through death, 
In years that bring the philosophic mind” 


Ah, yes; for the vanishing pleasures of youth there 
is more than compensation in the experience, the wis¬ 
dom, the intellectual strength, and the spiritual joys of 
mature manhood and womanhood. The happiness of 
childhood and the physical vigour of early manhood 
and womanhood are not to be compared in value with 
the qualities which supersede them as they pass under 
the cloud. Without a cloud, there could be no rain¬ 
bow. Without the vanishing of youth and the over¬ 
casting of life with the cares and responsibilities of 
manhood and womanhood, there could be none of those 
deeper and more satisfying experiences with which we 
are enriched as the years pass away. 

And then there comes another cloud, to which we 
give the name of death. O, what a dark, dark cloud it 
is to millions of the human race! Into it, one by one, 
go our neighbours and acquaintances, our friends and 
some of those whom we have loved the most tenderly. 
It envelops them, and in this world we shall see them 
no more. And presently we ourselves, one by one, 
shall go into it, and the places that have known us will 
know us no more. But what a radiant bow of promise 
now gleams athwart that cloud of death! And what 
an unspeakably glorious covenant our heavenly Father 
has made with us concerning it! In the light that now 
shines from the life and the teachings and the death 
and the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ we see 
that the death of our physical bodies leads directly to 
the birth of our spiritual bodies, and to our entrance 
into a world far superior to this one, where we shall 


162 


THE BOW IN THE CLOUD 


find all of the loved ones wnom we have lost for a 
while. The cloud of mortality is overarched and il¬ 
lumined by the promise of immortality—that “ as in 
Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,” 
and that in our Father’s house of many mansions we 
shall be with them forevermore. Looking 1 on that 
blessed promise, and considering that heavenly cove¬ 
nant, we can encounter death in a fearless spirit, and 
say, even while our tears are falling, “ O, grave, where 
is thy victory? Thanks be to God who giveth us the 
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! ” No cloud, 
no rainbow. No physical death, no resurrection into 
the spiritual life of the heavenly world. In the provi¬ 
dence of God one leads to the other, and is the neces¬ 
sary condition on which it depends. 

Furthermore, as we journey onward in our earthly 
career, leaving behind us the pleasures which are pe¬ 
culiar to youth, not only do we suffer the loss of such 
pleasures, and the temporary loss of the loved ones 
who go from us, but we suffer in many other ways. 
Every person’s life on earth is more or less clouded 
with adversity and suffering. For, as the Bible de¬ 
clares, “ although affliction cometh not forth of the 
dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground, 
yet man is bom unto trouble as the sparks fly upward.” 
And a great deal of the affliction is apparently un¬ 
merited. The people who perforce endure it have done 
nothing, so far as they know, to deserve it. 

Ofttimes, like a sudden tornado or rain-storm, with¬ 
out warning or any evident justification, it arises and 
beclouds their lives; sometimes in consequence of what 
we call accidents, sometimes through some mere in¬ 
advertence on their part, sometimes through the mis¬ 
takes or the folly of others, and sometimes for no 


THE BOW IN THE CLOUD 


163 


f manifest reason at all. Innocent people suffer for the 
transgressions of others. Little children sometimes 
suffer before they are old enough to know how to take 
means to protect themselves. Sickness, poverty, loss of 
fortune, business perplexities, family troubles, defec¬ 
tion of friends, persecution by enemies, disappoint¬ 
ments and trials and tribulations of all sorts, are 
constantly beclouding men’s lives in this world; and 
they cry out against it. Why must our lives be so dark¬ 
ened ? they say. Why must we be so afflicted, so storm- 
beaten ? What have we done to deserve such adversity ? 
And the only satisfactory answer is, You are suffering 
in accordance with the loving purpose of God, Whose 
thoughts and ways are higher than ours as the heavens 
are higher than the earth, and Who never afflicts any 
one, or allows him to be afflicted, excepting with a 
view to his ultimate welfare, which is included in the 
ultimate welfare of all. 

The Bible says that “ whom the Lord loveth He 
chasteneth,” and that “ though no chastening for the 
present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous, neverthe¬ 
less afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of right¬ 
eousness unto them that are exercised thereby.” It 
says that “ the sufferings of this present time are not 
worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be 
revealed in us”; that Jesus Himself was “made per¬ 
fect through suffering”; and that “ if we suffer with 
him, we shall also be glorified together.” That is the 
resplendent bow of promise spanning the dark cloud 
of human suffering; and while it does not explain the 
whole problem of suffering, it sufficiently explains it, 
in a general way, to enable us to believe that no suffer¬ 
ing is useless. Sometimes and somewhere, when we 
know as we are known, we shall realize that all suffer- 


164. 


THE BOW IN THE CLOUD 


ing, the suffering of the innocent as well as that of 
the guilty, has been permitted by the Almighty for the 
highest good of mankind. Then we shall be able to 
read understanding^ what some one has called its 
hieroglyphic; significance, its mysteriously sacred mean¬ 
ing. In the meantime, let us look on the bow of prom¬ 
ise, and trust in the Lord. 

And, finally, even when we behold, as we cannot 
avoid beholding, that cloud which of all clouds is the 
darkest and most mysterious, the awful cloud of human 
sin, let us also look rejoicingly on the bow of God’s 
heavenly promise concerning it. For while there is no 
excuse for sin so far as the sinner himself is concerned, 
and while they who sin must suffer for it, the Bible 
distinctly teaches that its permission by the Creator is 
for an entirely wise and beneficent purpose. 

In the first place, it evidently serves as a means of 
revealing His love to us, and of revealing it more fully 
than would otherwise be possible. For if mankind 
never sinned, He could never forgive them; and if He 
never forgave them, they could never know that He 
loved them enough to forgive them. How could the 
prodigal son ever have known the full extent of his 
father’s great love for him unless he had truthfully 
said to him, “ I have sinned against thee ” ? His sin¬ 
fulness was the dark foil against which his father’s 
love for him shone forth in resplendent strength and 
beauty. And even so, the Bible says, “ God commend- 
eth His love to us, in that while we were yet sinners, 
Christ died for us ”; and, again, “ Herein is love, not 
that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His 
Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” He could not 
have so revealed His love to us unless there had been 
something for Him to forgive in regard to us. As a 


THE BOW IN THE CLOUD 


165 


ray of sunlight is made visible by the dust in the at¬ 
mosphere, God’s love for us is revealed by its relation 
to our sinfulness. That is certainly one of the reasons 
why He has made us liable to temptation and sinful¬ 
ness. As the Bible declares, He “ hath shut up all unto 
disobedience, that He might have mercy upon all.” 

And, more than that, under His loving government, 
our liability to sinfulness will be a means of promoting 
our highest good in the end. Otherwise, He would 
certainly not have permitted it. He would not have 
made us subject to what the Bible calls vanity unless 
He had known beforehand that He could deliver us 
out of it into the glorious liberty of the children of 
God. He knew, when He created us, that He could 
make the wrath of man to praise Him, and that the 
remainder of wrath He would be able to restrain. He 
knew, when He permitted it, that He could finally make 
an end of sin and bring in everlasting righteousness, 
and that He could utilize even our sinfulness to that 
end, from evil “ still educing good, and better thence, 
in infinite progression.” He is doing it even now. He 
is educating and training us and making us morally 
stronger than we should otherwise be, by the necessity 
which we are under to face the existence of evil and to 
enter into conflict with it. 

If there were no evil tO' contend against, there would 
be nothing to develop our virtuous qualities, our obedi¬ 
ence, fidelity, moral courage, and heroism. And, sinful 
though it is for us to> yield tO' temptation, it is better for 
us than never to know what it is to be tempted. 

Best of all would it be for us to imitate that perfect 
One Who, although He was tempted like as we are, 
was nevertheless without sin; and sometimes, under 
His leadership, we shall attain to that eminence. Some- 


166 


THE BOW IN THE CLOUD 


time in the boundless future, under the influence of His 
teachings and His divine personality, we shall all come 
forth victorious from the conflict with evil: for “ as 
through the one man’s disobedience the many were 
made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one 
shall the many be made righteous.” Sinful now, like 
its first progenitor, the whole human race shall at last 
be holy, even as Jesus Christ is holy. The seed of 
woman will finally bruise the serpent’s head. Evil will 
have served its purpose in developing man’s moral 
qualities; and, more than conquerors in regard to it by 
the help of the Saviour, mankind will attain to that 
glorious liberty for which the creation has been travail¬ 
ing from the beginning till now. 

No cloud, no rainbow. No vanishing of youthful 
pleasures, no deeper joys of mature manhood and 
womanhood. No physical death, no resurrection. No 
suffering, no development into spiritual perfectness. 
No evil, no spiritual victory over it. No temporary 
subjection to what the Bible calls vanity, no everlast¬ 
ing enthronement as the children of God. It is surely 
worth while to have the clouds that come over us, for 
the sake of the wonderful blessings which our heavenly 
Father brings out of them. 


XVIII 


MAKING A VIRTUE OF NECESSITY 

“From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his dis¬ 
ciples hozv that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many 
things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be 
killed, and be raised again the third day .”— Matt. 16:21. 



intelligent person can carefully study the life 
of our Saviour without seeing that He acted, 
during the whole of His ministry, under the 
steady pressure of a great moral imperative which im¬ 
pelled Him to take just the course that He did. He 
habitually spoke of Himself as being subject to an 
authority which He was bound to obey; and, further¬ 
more, as being under the impulsion of a great historical 
movement which required Him to live and die in a par¬ 
ticular way. He said that God had sent Him, that He 
had come to do the will of God, and that He was ful¬ 
filling the teachings of the law and the prophets. 
When He was only twelve years of age, He said to His 
anxious mother, when she had found Him in the tem¬ 
ple, “ Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s 
business? ” and in the latter part of His life He con¬ 
tinually showed, by His speech and His conduct, that 
He was actuated by the consciousness of a spiritual 
necessity which would give Him no rest till His task 
was performed. He spoke of His work as something 
which it was necessary that He should do, and of His 
suffering as something which it was necessary that He 
should endure, even though He prayed to be delivered 
from some of it. 


167 



168 MAKING A VIRTUE OF NECESSITY 


The necessity was not of such a nature that ITe could 
not have escaped from it by refusing to submit to it; 
but, in that case, He must have submitted to the al¬ 
ternative necessity of being false to His mission and 
losing the blessedness of being the mediator between 
God and mankind. His only choice was between the 
two necessities; and He wisely chose that which His 
heavenly Father had designed for Him, notwithstand¬ 
ing all of the sacrifice and the pain which it involved. 

Towards the end of His life, so driven was He by 
His arduous labours that He hardly had time enough 
for eating and sleeping, while He knew that just before 
Him were Gethsemane and Calvary. But on, and on, 
and on He went, feeling that He must allow Himself 
no respite till He had completed the great work for 
which He came to this world. “ I have a baptism to 
be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be 
accomplished! ” said He. Not till He hung upon the 
cross, and was about to draw His closing breath, did 
He feel that the urgency was over, the necessity ended. 
Then He said, “ It is finished,” and, commending His 
spirit into the hands of His Father, was forever re¬ 
leased from His pain and His woe. No life was ever 
lived under a greater pressure or a stronger sense of 
obligation than that to which the life of Jesus Christ 
was subjected. 

That is one of the reasons why we should take it as 
an example. For, although we have no such excep¬ 
tional commission, and no such heavy cross to bear, 
there is to some extent a parallel between His life and 
our own in respect to the conditions under which we 
are here. 

In the first place, we are in this world because we 
have been sent into it by our heavenly Father. We 


MAKING A VIRTUE OF NECESSITY 169 


are here in accordance with His foreordination, His 
determinate counsel, His creative causation. “ It is He 
that hath made us, and not we ourselves,” and that 
“ hath made of one blood all nations of men for to 
dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined 
the times before appointed, and the bounds of their 
habitation.” We are here because He has put us 
here, and because He had a purpose in putting us here, 
which purpose it is incumbent on us to fulfil just as 
certainly as it was incumbent on the Lord Jesus Christ 
to fulfil the divine purpose for which He came to 
this world. 

And, in the next place, being here in accordance with 
the purpose of God, we are subject to necessities, which 
impel us to do some things that we would otherwise 
not do, and prevent us from doing some things that we 
otherwise would, occasionally putting us to' great incon¬ 
venience, and finally requiring us to give up our lives. 
We hardly begin to be conscious of our existence before 
we begin to be told what we must do and must not do. 
Nearly every little child is frequently told by his parents 
of something which he must either do or not do; and, 
when he begins to go to school, he is also told by his 
teachers, “ You must ” or “ You mustn’t ”; and when 
he becomes a little older and begins to mingle with 
society, he finds a host of other things which he either 
must or must not do, no matter what his inclinations 
may be in regard to them. He is subject not only to 
nature’s laws, but to the laws of his country, and the 
customs of society, and the dictates of conscience, and 
the commandments of religion, and the force of phys¬ 
ical circumstances, all saying to him either “ You 
must ” or “ You mustn’t ”; and finally comes the com¬ 
mandment, You must walk through the valley of the 


170 MAKING A VIRTUE OF NECESSITY 


shadow of death and depart from this world, never 
more to return. 

Surely, this is a world in which we are subject to a 
great deal of necessity; it is a world of tremendous 
forces and imperative conditions, from which there is 
no escape on this side of the grave. Some of those 
conditions are very hard to endure. No one finds them 
wholly easy or altogether agreeable, and the pressure 
is sometimes fearfully strong and severe. 

But what then? Inasmuch as there is no escape 
from the conditions thus imposed upon us, the only 
practical question which we have to decide is how we 
shall conduct ourselves with reference to them; and 
that is a question of most urgent importance, because 
upon the answer which any one gives to it his character 
and his usefulness and his happiness depend. 

Three courses may be taken in regard to this matter. 

One of those courses is to rebel against the duties 
and hardships of life. It is to fret and be irritable 
under the sense of compulsion which is imposed by the 
conditions of our life in this world. It is to take an 
attitude of resistance towards the imperativeness of the 
requirements which we are called to obey. It is to say 
“I will not,” in answer to the great “You must” 
which pursues us with its dictates from the cradle to 
the grave, and, in defiance and despite of it, to try to 
have our own way. 

That is the instinctive course of the natural man. It 
is the way in which most children begin to conduct 
themselves, and in which they are likely to continue till 
they are taught not to do so. A baby learns, after a 
while, that it is of no use to rebel against certain re¬ 
quirements. It learns to submit to them, as a matter 
of prudence at first, and then as a matter of habit. 


MAKING A VIRTUE OF NECESSITY 171 


And so, by degrees, nearly everybody learns to submit 
in some matters to the imperativeness of the conditions 
of his life in this world. But in respect to many other 
matters the great majority of mankind do not learn to 
submit. They fret and rebel and kick against the goad 
all the days of their life. And the inevitable result of 
it is to make their troubles a great deal worse than they 
would otherwise be. As the Saviour said to Saul of 
Tarsus, “ It is hard to kick against the goad,” and they 
who take that course take the worst of all courses. 
It is the cause of more wretchedness than all others 
combined. 

Another course is that of stoically accepting what¬ 
ever occurs. “ What can’t be cured must be endured ” 
is the motto of the people who resort to that method. 
They settle into a sort of fatalism, and grimly let things 
take their course without trying to direct them in one 
way or another. And while that is not as bad as to 
be constantly fretting and chafing and rebelling, it is 
only somewhat less fatal to a person’s progress and 
happiness. It may enable him to endure his misfor¬ 
tunes without complaining, but it can neither comfort 
him nor assist him to make the most of his opportuni¬ 
ties. Stoicism, at its best, is no better than the leth- 
argy of a captive wild animal, which has learned by 
experience the uselessness of trying to bieak out of its 
cage and the sharpness of the prodding iron which is 
carried in the keeper’s hand. That will do well enough 
for a beast from the jungle, but not for a being who is 

made in the image of God. 

No, the right course in regard to life’s duties and 
hardships is neither to rebel against them nor simply 
to accept them in a stoical spirit. It is to meet them, as 
they were met by the Cord Jesus Christ. It is to accept 


172 MAKING A VIRTUE OF NECESSITY 


them and utilize them in the spirit that He always 
showed towards the work that His heavenly Father had 
sent Him to do. His mission involved vastly more 
trials and hardships than fall to the lot of the rest of 
mankind, and He was sometimes strongly tempted to 
turn away from it and to seek for an easier manner 
of life. That was the temptation which beset Him in 
the wilderness, at the very outset of His ministry. But 
He had put it behind Him, and with a full conscious¬ 
ness of what His decision involved, not only accepted 
what God had ordained for Him, but put Himself into 
voluntary and active accord with it, making the will of 
God His own will, and throwing all of His energy into 
the accomplishment of the work which His Father had 
sent Him to do. And so He achieved a most glorious 
victory; so He made His life sublime; so He became 
the world’s Redeemer and obtained the name that is 
above every name excepting His Father’s; and so He 
obtained for Himself, moreover, a freedom and a joy 
of transcendent quality—that freedom which He prom¬ 
ised to give to His followers—that joy for the sake of 
which He endured the cross, and of which He said to 
His disciples on the night of the last supper, “ These 
things have I spoken unto you, that my joy may remain 
in you and that your joy may be full.” By renouncing 
self-will and putting Himself into conformity with the 
will of His Father, He removed all contradiction be¬ 
tween “ I must ” and “ I will,” harmonizing His whole 
life, and becoming so deeply interested in the work 
which He was doing that He could truthfully say, “ My 
meat is to do the will of Him that sent me and to finish 
His work.” That which would otherwise have been 
unspeakably disagreeable became a source of strength 
and joy to Him. 



MAKING A VIRTUE OF NECESSITY 173 


That is the way to live freely and joyfully and suc¬ 
cessfully. If we put our wills in opposition to God’s 
purpose concerning us, rebelling against the course 
which His providence marks out for us, we can no 
more live freely or joyfully or successfully than if we 
disobey the laws of nature. If we disobey them, they 
punish us and interfere with our liberty; but if we put 
ourselves into intelligent and willing accord with them, 
they relieve us from all feeling of disagreeable com¬ 
pulsion and enable us to accomplish most wonderful 
things. “ Nature is commanded,” it has been said, “ by 
obeying her ”; and we may reverentially say the same 
thing of God’s providence. It is always at our com¬ 
mand if we shape our conduct accordingly. In that 
case the will of God, instead of hindering us, is a help 
to us, and the things that would interfere with it are a 
means of promoting our blessedness. It all depends on 
how we take them and bear ourselves in regard to them. 

Did you ever have the exciting and agreeable experi¬ 
ence of shooting a rapid in a birch-bark canoe? You 
might suppose that in the midst of such a powerful 
current, interspersed with jagged rocks and boulders, 
it would be impossible for such a craft to escape from 
destruction. And so it certainly would if the canoeman 
tried to paddle against the force of the current, or if he 
endeavoured to drift with it. But he is not so unskil¬ 
ful. Knowing the force of the current and its danger¬ 
ous character to those who treat it unskilfully, he also 
knows how to utilize its swiftness and energy. Instead 
of hugging the shore, as he approaches the rapid he 
steers into the swiftest portion of it, and so directs his 
course that, instead of being injured by it, the canoe is 
carried onward with accelerated speed till it glides into 
the placid water that lies smiling below. He commands 


174 MAKING A VIRTUE OF NECESSITY 


the current by obeying it. He makes it minister to his 
liberty, his progress and his happiness, by wisely keep¬ 
ing himself in accord with its energy. And even so can 
we do with the current of life, whatsoever the diffi¬ 
culties into which we are borne by it. By rebelling 
against its imperativeness, we can wreck our useful¬ 
ness and our happiness; or, by intelligently and wil¬ 
lingly putting ourselves into accord with it, and so 
making a virtue of necessity, we can make it serve our 
highest welfare. 

Making a virtue of necessity is sometimes mentioned 
sarcastically, as if it were an impossible or a discredit¬ 
able thing; but, as a matter of fact, it is frequently the 
only wise course to pursue. For it surely is virtuous 
so to use the necessities which Providence sends to us 
as to serve the divine purpose for which they are sent 
to us. That is what Jesus did. Pie not only endured 
privation and suffering, but He did it uncomplainingly, 
trustfully, triumphantly, in the spirit which said “ Thy 
will be done.” That is where His virtue lay; and if 
we would share in His kingdom, we must have “ the 
same mind in us that was also in him.” So shall we 
walk at liberty in keeping God’s precepts, whatever our 
temporal fortunes may be; and when our course on 
earth is ended, we can close our eyes in death serenely, 
not as victims but as victors, passing triumphantly 
from the life that now is to the higher life that 
awaits us, where the meaning of all mysteries will be 
fully revealed. 


XIX 

AN ANTIDOTE FOR WORRYING 

“In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and 
supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made 
known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all 
understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in 
Christ Jesus .”— Phil. 4 : 5~7 [R* V.]. 

I T has been truly said that worry, rather than work, 
is what frequently kills people. While overwork 
causes the death of some, overworry causes that 
of a great many more; and even when it stops short of 
actually killing its victims, it disposes them to various 
ailments, and prevents them from enjoying life as they 
otherwise would. And if I simply said worry, instead 
of overworry, my meaning would be just the same. 
For while work is very easily distinguished from, over¬ 
work, there is no real distinction between worry and 
overworry. All worry is overworry, for we should 
never worry at all. Even a little of it is bad, and the 
more of it the worse for anybody. 

And yet it is one of the commonest things in the 
world. The people who never worry at all are very 
few and far between. Most people worry to some 
extent, and legion is the name of those who worry a 
great deal during the most of their lives. Tike the 
Israelites in the wilderness, when they have no actual 
troubles to worry about, they worry about what may 
occur in the future, looking forward with foreboding 
to the possibility of evils of which there is no certainty, 
instead of acting on the principle that sufficient unto 

175 


176 


AN ANTIDOTE FOR WORRYING 


the day is the evil thereof and trying to get the greatest 
benefit from whatever occurs. 

Oh, the folly of borrowing trouble and then worry¬ 
ing about it, or of even worrying about the troubles 
that really occur! If we could get rid of the worrying 
which people do' in this world, we could get rid of the 
greater part of the distress and unhappiness. 

By what means to get rid of it, or of even our own 
part of it, is a vastly important question for us, and the 
only sufficient answer to it is that which the Christian 
religion supplies. Jesus gave an answer to it in His 
sermon on the mount, and the apostle gives an answer 
to it in the words of my text. 

A good deal of our worrying might be avoided if 
we would duly consider the uselessness of it. “ Which 
of you,” said Jesus, “ by taking anxious thought, can 
add one cubit to his stature?” Nobody ever gained 
anything by worrying, and nobody ever will. If 
troubles are to come, they will come in spite of our 
worrying; and if not, why should we make ourselves 
miserable by thinking about them ? We create trouble 
in that way instead of avoiding it. In fact, 

“ There's many a trouble 
Would burst like a bubble, 

And into the waters of Lethe depart, 

Did we not rehearse it, 

And tenderly nurse it, 

And give it a permanent place in the heart'* 

What we need in such cases, as a cure for our worry¬ 
ing, is the use of a little common sense. But, aside 
from the difficulty of so controlling our thoughts and 
our feelings, there are many troubles to which that 
method could not be applied, because they have either 


AN ANTIDOTE FOR WORRYING 


177 


arrived or are sure to come by-and-by. And if we are 
not to worry about such things, we must have some 
other resource than a realization of its uselessness. 
Useless or not, we must worry about them unless we 
somehow stupefy our sensibilities and our intelligence, 
or, retaining our sensibilities and our intelligence also, 
make use of the method which my text sets before us. 

That is what the apostle did, and it is also what 
Jesus did. They had the severest kind of troubles; but, 
notwithstanding their afflictions and the certainty of the 
martyrdom which they knew to be awaiting them, they 
not only refrained from worrying, but were habitually 
uncomplaining and tranquil and joyful, because they 
let their thoughts dwell in a thankful and prayerful 
spirit on the nearness and wisdom and goodness of 
God. They never tried to drown their troubles. They 
never tried to run away from them. They never denied 
their reality or treated them as illusions. But, uncom¬ 
plainingly accepting them in the spirit of the religion 
which they believed and proclaimed, they were free 
from all worriment, and were filled with a blessed 
peacefulness even when their tribulations were most 
acute and severe. And if we imitate them in that 
respect, we shall likewise have the peace that passes all 
understanding, however numerous and distressing our 
trials may be. 

In the first place, we shall be comforted by the con¬ 
sciousness that our heavenly Father is near to us and 
that He understands our difficulties. 

Who does not know how much harder it is to endure 
suffering all alone, without any companionship, than 
in the presence of some one who is friendly and com¬ 
passionate? Who of us does not remember what 
comfort he often received, in the troubles of his child- 


178 


AN ANTIDOTE FOR WORRYING 


hood, from knowing that his father or his mother was 
near and was sympathetically aware of whatever was 
distressing him? To many a child in a sick-room, or 
in the darkness of the night, awaking out of troubled 
dreams, the consciousness of his mother’s nearness, 
even though she is silent, gives such quietness and 
peacefulness as nothing else could bestow. And, even 
so, when we realize the nearness of God and let our 
thoughts dwell on His sympathy and love for us, it 
gives a feeling of companionship and security and 
peacefulness which prevents us from worrying as we 
otherwise would. 

Too many of us think of God, when we think of 
Him at all, as a far-away Being, enthroned in the 
sky, and interested chiefly in angelic affairs. There is 
no comfort in that; nor is there any good sense in it. 
God is not afar off. “ Closer is He than breathing, 
and nearer than hands and feet.” In Him we live and 
move and have our being; and He knows all about us. 
Our joys and our sorrows, our successes and our fail¬ 
ures, our temptations and dangers and tribulations and 
sins, and even the innermost thoughts of our hearts, are 
all fully understood by Him; and while He by no means 
clears the guilty, He is much more forgiving and loving 
and sympathetic towards even His most sinful children 
than any human parent can be. And if, when we are 
in distress of body, mind, or estate, and are worrying 
about actual or imaginary ills, we would trustfully 
think of His nearness and sympathy, it would be a 
wonderful help to us—as it was to Jesus Christ when 
Fie was about to be crucified and He knew that even 
His disciples would be afraid to remain with Him. 
“ Behold,” said He, “ the hour cometh, yea, is now 
come, that ye shall all be scattered, every man to his 


AN ANTIDOTE FOR WORRYING 


179 


own, and shall leave me alone; and yet I am not alone, 
because the Father is with me.” And, so sustained, He 
bore His cross without complaining. 

None of us is alone. Our heavenly Father, infinitely 
sympathetic, is with every one of us; and if we would 
think of that fact when we are having any trouble, it 
would help to keep us from worrying. The simple 
consciousness of it would have a powerful tendency to 
comfort and strengthen us. 

And not only is He always with us, but we can enter 
into communion with Him. We can tell Him our 
troubles, and ask Him to help us, and so obtain still 
further relief from our worriments. 

Not that He needs to be told of our troubles, but 
only that we need to tell them to Him. And not that 
He needs to be asked to assist us, but only that we 
need to ask Him. For in the very act of thus com¬ 
muning with Him we find relief and strength and 
peacefulness. There is often great helpfulness in 
telling one’s perplexities even to a human friend, and 
sometimes even to a stranger if no one else is at hand. 
Human nature is so constituted that it desires to give 
expression to its thoughts and its feelings; and there 
are times when it cannot be at ease without doing so. 
To keep them locked up in one’s breast is to be op¬ 
pressed by them, and especially so if they are char¬ 
acterized by anxiety. To use a Biblical metaphor, 
they are like a burning fire shut up in the bones. To 
tell them to somebody, especially if he sympathizes, 
relieves the oppression. That is the value of confession 
for those who have sinned, and of conversation about 
their troubles for the sad and distressed. 

We are told that after John the Baptist was beheaded 
in prison, his disciples buried the body and then went 


180 


AN ANTIDOTE FOR WORRYING 


and told Jesus. They could have done nothing" better 
as a relief for their woe. And we can do' nothing 
better, when we are in trouble about anything, than to 
tell it tO' the heavenly Father whom Jesus has revealed 
to us. Blessed is the sacred privilege of thus going to 
His throne of grace and unburdening ourselves by 
communion with Him. No one ever went in vain. 
Human beings may refuse to listen to us; or, if they 
listen, they may do so without any sympathy. But 
our heavenly Father always sympathizes, and when 
we tell our troubles to Him we inevitably feel better 
for it and are more able to bear them. When we 
pray to Him for the strength and the peace which we 
need, if we pray in the right spirit, He will answer 
the prayer. 

Never be doubtful as to the reasonableness or the 
power of prayer. As for its reasonableness, Mr. Hux¬ 
ley, the famous scientist, skeptic though he was, said 
in a letter to Charles Kingsley, “ Not that I mean for 
a moment to say that prayer is illogical; for if the 
whole universe is ruled by fixed laws, it is just as 
logically absurd for me to ask you to' answer this letter 
as to ask the Almighty to alter the weather.” The laws 
which God Himself has made, and to which the entire 
creation is subject, do not hinder Him from hearing 
and answering our prayers any more than they hinder 
a human father from answering the proper requests of 
his children. If we, being evil, as Jesus said, know 
how to give good things to those that ask for them, 
much more will our heavenly Father do> so. Away 
with all doubts and sophistical reasoning in regard to 
either His power or His willingness to> do so. He 
will as certainly answer our prayers, when we pray in 
the right spirit, as He will give us a harvest of grain 


AN ANTIDOTE FOR WORRYING 


181 


in the field when we obey the conditions which He 
Himself has ordained. 

Not that He will always give us just the things that 
we ask for. He is too wise and too just and too loving 
to do so. But when He does not give us exactly what 
we have asked for, He gives something that is better 
for us. Best of all, He imparts to us such a feeling 
of peacefulness that we can trustfully say, Thy will 
be done. 

Jesus prayed that, if possible, the cup of agony 
which was awaiting Him might be taken away. It was 
not taken away; but angels came and comforted Him; 
and then He went forth from the garden of Geth- 
seinane with a spirit of resignation and calmness and 
confidence which carried Him triumphantly through to 
the end. 

Paul repeatedly prayed for the removal of what he 
described as his thorn in the flesh. It was not taken 
away; but God said to him, “ My grace is sufficient 
for thee ”; and from that time forth, instead of com¬ 
plaining of his infirmities, or worrying about them, he 
gloried in them as a means of showing the power 
of Christ. 

And so, if we pray in the right spirit, we shall 
obtain a spiritual blessing, whatever else we may ob¬ 
tain or may not obtain. The peace which passes all 
understanding will keep our hearts and minds from 
all distracting anxieties, and we shall be able to meet 
whatever comes without losing our self-control or 
giving way to despair. 

Let us not lose sight of the proviso, however,— 
that we pray in the right spirit,—and let us observe 
what is said about praying with thankfulness. “ In 
everything,” says the apostle, ‘ by prayer and suppli- 


182 


AN ANTIDOTE FOR WORRYING 


cation with thanksgiving let your requests be made 
known unto God.’’ Do not omit the thanksgiving. 
Be thankful for past and present blessings when you 
ask God for still further assistance, or you will not be 
in a condition to receive the peacefulness which He 
promises. To ask even our fellowmen for favours 
while we manifest no thankfulness for what we have 
already received from them is to be unworthy of their 
kindness; and such an attitude towards God is no less 
reprehensible. 

Every one of us, whatever his troubles may be, has 
vastly more to be thankful for than he has to complain 
about. We are indebted to God for our very existence, 
and for all that makes it valuable. The world in which 
we live is His, and not a single day goes by in which 
His loving care is not renewedly shown to us. We are 
surrounded by its evidences, by day and by night, and 
wherever we go. 

In the quaint old English town of Chester, there 
stands on one of the principal streets a house which 
is known as “ God’s Providence House,” because of 
an inscription which was placed upon the front of it a 
long time ago. The inscription says, “ God’s provi¬ 
dence is mine inheritance.” Many thousands of per¬ 
sons have read that inscription, and every one of them 
might truly have said to himself, I myself am really 
living in God’s Providence House. For what else is 
this world? Oh, how richly it is furnished with the 
tokens of His providence, and how deeply we are in¬ 
debted for them! And, beyond all material and tem¬ 
poral benefits, what a glorious revelation He has given 
to us of the things which we shall inherit when we 
depart from this world! 

Ah, yes, we are all living in God’s Providence House, 


AN ANTIDOTE FOR WORRYING 


183 


and when we come to the end of our life in this world 
we shall simply move on into a larger and better one, 
more richly provided for the needs of our souls. 

If, then, you would have the peace which passes all 
understanding, “ in nothing be anxious, but in every¬ 
thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let 
your requests be made known unto God.” 

“ Build a little fence of trust 
Around today: 

Fill the space with loving work, 

And therein stay. 

Look not through the sheltering bars 
Upon tomorrow; 

God will help thee bear what comes 
Of joy or sorrow 



XX 

THE INHERITANCE OF THE MEEK 

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” 

Matt. 5: 5 . 

W HEN Jesus gave utterance to this noteworthy 
statement, it must have amazed and puzzled 
some of the people who heard it. For it is a 
part of the sermon on the mount, and from the place 
where it was spoken they could see a state of affairs 
which apparently disproved it. They could see the 
Sea of Galilee, and the flourishing cities that dotted its 
shores, and a wide stretch of the surrounding country, 
all owned or controlled or made subject to taxation by 
the domineering Romans, who had conquered the 
greater part of the then known world, and whose em¬ 
peror exalted himself as a god. 

The meek to inherit the earth, indeed! Were the 
Romans meek? Was it meekness that made them 
covet universal dominion, that raised and equipped 
their mighty armies, that enabled them to vanquish all 
other nations and to rule the world almost alone? 
Was Caesar a meek man? Was Herod a meek man? 
Was Pontius Pilate a meek man, or any of the other 
people who possessed the greater part of the earth 
and its products? Were they not a class of people 
who despised meekness and derided it? And had 
not such people possessed the earth from immemorial 
times ? 

Such thoughts must have arisen, it seems to me, in 

184 


THE INHERITANCE OF THE MEEK 185 


the minds of some of Jesus’ hearers when He declared 
that the meek should inherit the earth; and they could 
have credited His statement only by assuming that 
there would soon be a radical change in the conduct of 
this world’s affairs. 

Some of them, it is certain, did make that as¬ 
sumption. They expected a political and economical 
and social revolution. They supposed that Jesus was 
about to establish a kingdom which would supersede 
all other kingdoms, and that, under His dominion, the 
possession of the earth would be given to His follow¬ 
ers, who were to be distinguished not for their political 
and military qualities, but for their devotion and 
obedience. That seems to have been what His disciples 
expected. 

But no such revolution occurred during their life¬ 
time, nor has it ever yet occurred, nor is there any 
likelihood of it. There has been a great improvement, 
by slow degrees, in the government of this world’s 
affairs, in the distribution of property, and in the rela¬ 
tions between different classes of men; and the work 
of improvement is still going on. But there are no 
indications that real estate or any kind of worldly prop¬ 
erty has any stronger tendency now than it had two 
thousand years ago to come into the possession of 
meek-minded people. Apparently the tendency, now as 
then, is for all sorts of worldly property to come into 
the possession of aggressive, shrewd, and grasping 
people, the most of whom are, to say the least, no 
meeker than their poorer neighbours. 

Not that a spirit of meekness necessarily prevents 
an accumulation of property,—although it is certainly 
inconsistent with the accumulation of such vast for¬ 
tunes as are nowadays held by certain people, because 


186 THE INHERITANCE OF THE MEEK 


of the wrongful methods by which such fortunes are 
gained. The acquisition of worldly property depends, 
as a rule, on the exercise of qualities with which meek¬ 
ness either may or may not be associated. He who 
possesses those acquisitive qualities will be likely to 
have worldly- wealth, whether he possesses a meek 
disposition or not. Some rich men are meek, and a 
larger number are not. 

The time is coming, let us hope, when all of the good 
things which this world contains will be in the posses¬ 
sion of meek-minded people, because there will be no 
other people. But that time is still a long way off, and 
in the meantime the acquisition of worldly property 
will follow the same law that has always governed it. 
People will reap as they sow. In the struggle for ex¬ 
istence the fittest will survive; and in the struggle for 
worldly property, it will be obtained, as a rule, by those 
people who have the best business ability. 

What, then, was the Saviour’s meaning when He 
said that the meek shall inherit the earth? It will be 
clear to us, I think, and will commend itself to us, if 
we consider, in the first place, what meekness is; and, 
in the next place, what it is to inherit the earth. 

Let us avoid the mistake of confounding meekness 
with weakness. They are not identical, nor is there 
any similarity between them. Much harm has been 
done to the cause of Christianity by the somewhat pop¬ 
ular habit of confusing them with each other. The 
prevalent idea seems to be that a meek person is one 
with no force of character, a non-resistant, cowardly 
person, or a time-serving, hypocritical sort of a per¬ 
son, like Uriah Heep in the story of “ David Copper- 
field.” That conception of meekness has made it 
unpopular, and has brought Christianity into reproach 


THE INHERITANCE OF THE MEEK 187 

with some people because meekness is one of its special 
requirements. 

That such a conception is entirely erroneous, the 
Bible shows beyond all dispute. Let us look at the 
characters of some of the persons to whom it ascribes 
meekness in the highest degree. 

In the Old Testament Moses is held up to us as the 
greatest example of meekness. “ The man Moses,” we 
are told, “ was very meek, above all the men that were 
upon the face of the earth.” What kind of a man was 
Moses, then, if judged by his history? Was he lack¬ 
ing in strength or virility of character? Was he a 
weakling, a mollycoddle, to be pushed aside by manlier 
men or to be trodden under foot by the proud and the 
selfish? Whoever thinks so should read the story of 
his remarkable life. 

Behold him—in defiance of the social opinion which, 
under similar conditions, would have hindered almost 
any one—going forth from the royal palace, where he 
was treated as a prince of Egypt, to look upon the 
labours of the downtrodden Israelites, and to cheer 
them with his kindly words. Behold him smiting the 
Egyptian taskmaster who was abusing the Israelites. 
Behold him, in the land of Midian, defending the 
daughters of Jethro, the Midianite, from the shepherds 
who denied them, their rights at the well. Follow him 
back to the land of Egypt, and see him engaged in the 
mighty task of securing his people’s freedom; and 
then go with him on the journey through the wilder¬ 
ness to Mt. Sinai, and see him when, having descended 
from the mountain, he finds them engaged in idolatrous 
worship ; and then behold his towering wrath as, hav¬ 
ing burnt and then pulverized the gilded image they 
were worshiping, he mixes its ashes with some water 


188 THE INHERITANCE OF THE MEEK 


and obliges them to swallow it. Does he look or behave 
like a spiritless man? On the contrary, he was a man 
of tremendous passions, a man of volcanic force of 
nature, a man of phenomenal strength and aggressive¬ 
ness, a man born to command, to be revered and 
obeyed. It needed such a man as he to control such a 
people as the Israelites were, and to lead them to the 
promised land. And yet the Bible says that he was 
the meekest of men. 

Or take the case of St. Paul. He, too, was a very 
meek man, in the Scriptural sense of the word; but 
there was surely nothing cowardly or weak about him. 
He was simply Saul of Tarsus Christianized, a man of 
most majestic spirit, of indomitable will, of unfailing 
courage, and of such nobility of character that, stand¬ 
ing as a shackled prisoner before Agrippa’s judgment 
seat, he did not hesitate to say to him, “ I would that 
not only thou, but all that hear me this day, were such 
as I am, excepting these bonds .’ 1 Oh, no, there was 
nothing weak or unmanly about him. 

Nor was there anything of that sort about Jesus of 
Nazareth, the meekest person and the manliest man 
who ever trod this, earth of ours. Despitefully treated 
though He was, and led away to be crucified without 
any resistance, like a sheep to the slaughter, it was not 
because He feared His enemies, but because He was 
sufficiently brave and devoted and loyal to His Father’s 
will to endure the cross, despising the shame, for the 
glory that was set before Him. When occasion re¬ 
quired He denounced His enemies to their faces, 
saying, “ Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypo¬ 
crites! Ye brood of vipers, how can ye escape the 
judgment of Gehenna? ” In the outer court of the 
temple He overturned the tables of the money changers, 


THE INHERITANCE OF THE MEEK 189 


and, denouncing the cattle dealers, drove their cattle 
out of the enclosure with a whip of small cords. And 
when the soldiers were about to arrest Him as He came 
forth from Gethsemane, so majestic was His appear¬ 
ance that they fell down before Him and refrained 
from arresting Him till He gave Himself up to them. 

True meekness, then, is nothing unmanly, nothing 
to be ashamed of before God or the world. As ex¬ 
emplified by its chief exponents, it is consistent with 
the noblest qualities and the most spirited conduct 
towards all kinds of iniquity. It is contradistinguished, 
not from manliness, nor from a proper sense of self- 
respect, nor from a feeling of righteous anger, but 
from egotism, vanity, self-assertiveness, jealousy, vin¬ 
dictiveness, and that whole line of sinful feelings. The 
meek man may have much self-respect, and may claim 
the respect of other people, but he cannot think of him¬ 
self more highly than he ought to think, nor claim 
more consideration than he really deserves. He may 
be a man of conscious power and may desire to use it 
to the fullest extent, but he can never be puffed up by 
it or be willing to use it in any manner which would 
contravene the ends of justice with reference to even 
the weakest of men. He may be a man of mighty 
passions, but not of ungovernable passions, nor of a 
tyrannical disposition, nor of a vindictive disposition, 
nor of a selfish disposition, nor of an irreligious dis¬ 
position in any particular. He rules his own spirit 
with humility towards God and with, respect for the 
rights of all mankind. He recognizes the fact that he 
is under the government of a superior Being, and is 
only one member of the great human family, of which 
every other member is equally entitled to a fair share 
of the many blessings which the Creator bestows. 


190 THE INHERITANCE OF THE MEEK 


The essence of true meekness, then, is a correct esti¬ 
mate of one’s relation to God and mankind. The meek 
man says, “ The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness 
thereof, the world, and they that dwell therein ”; and, 
full of that assurance, he conducts himself accordingly. 
That was the secret of the meekness of Moses. It was 
his attitude towards God, his consciousness of depen¬ 
dence on Him, his feeling of obligation to Him, his 
unfaltering trust in Him, and his willingness to do 
His will. 

And so it was in modern times with two of our 
own greatest national leaders. Each of them was a 
very meek man. 

History tells us that George Washington had a very 
quick temper and great physical courage; and there is 
a tradition that once, under extreme provocation, when 
his military orders had been disobeyed, he gave utter¬ 
ance in his anger to some terrible oaths. If the tradi¬ 
tion is true, it shows that, like Moses, he fell short of 
the perfect meekness of the Lord Jesus Christ; for we 
cannot imagine Jesus Christ as giving way to such an 
outburst. But, notwithstanding such occasional fail¬ 
ings on his part, when we consider what Washington 
had to put up with during the seven wearisome years 
of our Revolutionary war, it is a wonder that he sel¬ 
dom, if ever, exhibited any arrogance, or uttered any 
reproaches, or showed any desire to return evil for 
evil, but habitually subordinated his personal judgment 
to the orders of a critical and incompetent Congress, 
trying to keep his perishing army together and to use 
it to the best advantage, never doubting that, in some 
way, God would enable this country to succeed in the 
end. His meekness, in the Biblical sense of the word, 
was remarkable. Instead of seeking any selfish end. 


THE INHERITANCE OF THE MEEK 191 


or sulking because of the annoyances which hindered 
him, he humbled himself and devoted all of his energy 
to the national welfare in a spirit of prayerful reliance 
on the wisdom and justice and goodness of God. 

And so with Abraham Lincoln. Few men have ever 
suffered more unreasonable criticism, or contended 
against greater difficulties, than those to which he was 
subjected while he was the President of this nation. 
But he endured it all in a spirit of meekness, never 
reviling, never complaining, never showing any bitter¬ 
ness towards his bitterest enemies, but always showing 
a perfect trust in the superintending power and pur¬ 
pose of God. His favourite poem was, “ O, why 
should the spirit of mortal be proud? ” and no one in 
such a lofty station was ever less proud or more 
humble than he. 

It is the meekness of such noble people that keeps 
them in the path of duty and makes them patient and 
forbearing and true to the end. Their constant aim is 
not to glorify themselves, but to glorify God and serve 
the cause of mankind. 

Now, such people, the Saviour says, shall inherit the 
earth; and, in the Biblical sense of the expression, they 
do. They already inherit it in the sense which the 
apostle had in mind when he said, in his epistle to the 
Corinthian Christians, “ All things are yours; whether 
Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or 
death, or things present, or things to come; all are 
yours; and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.” 

In order to understand my text, we must recognize 
the fact that there are two kinds of ownership, one of 
which consists in the possession of a legal title, with 
the corresponding power to control and to sell, and the 
other of which consists in the power to enjoy. The 


192 THE INHERITANCE OF THE MEEK 


first is derived from human sources. The other is 
derived from God. He who has but very little of the 
first kind of ownership may have a great deal of the 
other and better kind; whereas he who possesses a 
great deal of the former kind may have scarcely any, 
or none at all, of the better kind. Some persons who 
are commonly considered to be very wealthy, because 
they have the legal title to a vast amount of worldly 
property, are very poor in respect to the enjoyment of 
it; whereas others, who, according to worldly stand¬ 
ards, are among the poorest of the poor, are very 
wealthy in their enjoyment of the world which they 
live in, because they regard it as God’s world, and He 
has given them an appreciation of its treasures and its 
glories which makes it theirs in the highest and best 
sense of the word. 

What difference does it make to me who- holds the 
legal title to a beautiful picture, if it hangs where I 
can see it whenever I choose, and if to me it is a source 
of unqualified pleasure ? If its legal owner is a person 
who has no- sense of its beauty, or who habitually as¬ 
sociates it with some troublesome thoughts which occur 
to him whenever he happens to look at it, wdio owns it 
the more truly, he or I? Or if some one has a book 
which is printed in a language of whose meaning he 
is ignorant, and I understand that language and have 
access to the volume and take great pleasure in reading 
it, who owns it the more truly, he or I ? 

Is not that person the most veritable owner of any¬ 
thing who derives the most enjoyment from it? If so, 
a servant on the estate of a multi-millionaire may really 
own it more truly than the rich man himself, and a 
brakeman on a railway train may own more of the 
earth than the railroad king who rides in his sumptuous 


THE INHERITANCE OF THE MEEK 193 


private car and holds the title to many thousands of 
acres of land. The more property some people have, 
the less real pleasure they receive from it. Instead of 
owning it in the best sense, they are its discontented 
slaves, driven about by the necessity of taking care of 
it, and tormented by their fear of losing it and their 
desire to add to it and their envy of other people who 
appear to have more. Such people do not really in¬ 
herit the earth, no' matter how extensive their posses¬ 
sions may be. It is the meek who really inherit it—the 
unselfish, the humble, the religiously minded, who re¬ 
gard it as one of the many rooms in their heavenly 
Father’s mansion, which they, as His children, are free 
to use and enjoy. They are not hindered by the dis¬ 
tinction between mine and thine. They have no covet¬ 
ousness, no envy, to prevent them from enjoying the 
manifold benefits which the Creator has provided for 
the enjoyment of all. Like bees which gather honey 
from every field which they visit, no matter where their 
hive may be, the meek gather enrichment wherever 
they are—from the heavens and the earth, from the 
mountains and the valleys, from the woods and the 
fields, from waving harvests and wayside flowers, from, 
what is commonly called their own and from that 
which belongs to others also. It is theirs because it is 
God’s, and they are His children and heirs. 



XXI 

“ IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN ” 



* Then said Agrippa unto Festus, This man might have 
been set at liberty if he had not appealed unto Caesar — 
Acts 26:32. 

LTHOUGH the apostle Paul was of Hebrew 
parentage, and, as he himself said, was a He¬ 
brew of the Hebrews, he was also a Roman 
citizen, having inherited his status as such from his 
father, on whom it had been conferred by the Roman 
government. There were several ways in which a per¬ 
son might obtain such a status otherwise than by in¬ 
heritance. He might purchase it from the Roman 
government; or it might be given to him as a reward 
for distinguished services; or, if he had been a slave, 
he might receive it by manumission, in connection with 
his liberty. Howsoever obtained, it involved certain 
rights and privileges, among which were exemption 
from punishment by scourging and the right of appeal¬ 
ing from the judgment of any lower tribunal to the 
judgment of the Roman emperor. 

So, when Paul was arrested by some of his enemies 
and was brought to trial before Festus, the Roman 
governor of Judea, on certain false charges which they 
had trumped up against him, he exercised his right as 
a Roman citizen, and, believing that his chances for 
acquittal would be better at Rome than they would be 
at Jerusalem, he said to the governor, “ I appeal unto 
Caesar.” That settled the matter, so far as the place 

194 


IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 


195 


of the trial was concerned. But, not long afterwards, 
when Herod Agrippa, who was the ruler of a neigh¬ 
bouring province, paid a visit to Festus, and was in¬ 
formed of the matter, he, being well acquainted with 
the laws of the Jews, was convinced that Paul had 
done nothing in violation thereof, and said to his fel¬ 
low governor, “ This man might have been set at liberty 
if he had not appealed unto Caesar.'’ 

Perhaps he might have been. Perhaps he was mis¬ 
taken in supposing that he improved his condition by 
appealing. Perhaps Festus, after conferring with 
Agrippa, would have acquitted him. It might have 
been so. But, even if it had been, would it have been 
any better for him or for any one? Who can tell? 
We can easily see, on the one hand, that he would have 
avoided the dangerous voyage to Rome, in which he 
was shipwrecked on the island of Melita, and his sub¬ 
sequent years of imprisonment in the capital city, and 
his final condemnation and execution by the govern¬ 
ment. But, on the other hand, we have no means of 
knowing what his fate would have been. Within a 
week of his acquittal, he might have been assassinated 
by the band of conspirators who had bound themselves 
by an oath to make an end of his life. Or any of a 
hundred other things might have interfered with a 
continuance of his usefulness. We cannot tell what 
would have happened to him. But we know that, in 
fact, his life was prolonged for about six or seven 
years, and that, during that time, notwithstanding his 
imprisonment, he did some of the very best work of 
his life, the loss of which would have been irreparable 
to the cause of Christianity. For it was during those 
six or seven years that he wrote his epistles to the 
Ephesians and the Philippians and the Colossians, and 


196 


IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 


his four pastoral epistles, besides reaching with his 
spoken word a multitude of people who were living in 
Rome, including some of Caesar’s household: so that, 
as he said in his letter to the Philippians, the things 
which had happened unto him had fallen out rather 
unto the furtherance of the gospel. 

By not appealing unto Caesar, he might have been 
set at liberty in the land of Judea. By appealing, he 
was sent to Rome to further the interests of the gospel 
at the expense of his liberty; and he probably never 
spent any time in lamenting it. That was not his dis¬ 
position, nor was it according to the faith which he 
held and proclaimed. Instead of bemoaning the situ¬ 
ation and saying to himself, If I had not appealed 
unto Caesar I might perhaps be at liberty, he ac¬ 
cepted the facts and, forgetting the things that were 
behind, pressed onward to the achievements which 
were still possible for him. And in that respect we 
should imitate him whenever we have an occasion for 
doing so. 

Many things might now be very different in the 
world, and also in our personal lives and fortunes, if 
in times gone by certain things had been done which 
were left undone, or vice versa; and some persons are 
habitually given to lamenting it, and letting their minds 
dwell in a morbid manner on the possibility that some 
things were great mistakes or misfortunes. The most 
of us are probably prone at times to indulge in such 
retrospective imaginations and repinings. We wonder 
what the result would have been if we ourselves had 
done differently, or if some one else had done differ¬ 
ently; and, imagining that it might have been better for 
us, we perhaps worry over the fear that a mistake has 
been made and wish that we had taken a different 


IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 


197 


course. It is so easy to imagine what might have been 
if something else had been different, and then to fancy 
that the result might have been a great deal better for 
us, or for those who are dear to us, or for humanity in 
general—just as the original disciples of Jesus imagined 
that it would have been better for the cause of human¬ 
ity if the woman who anointed His head and His feet 
had sold the precious ointment which she used for that 
purpose, and had given the proceeds to some charitable 
object. “ It might have been sold for more than three 
hundred pence, and have been given to the poor,” 
said they. 

“ It might have been ”—how often do we hear those 
words, and how often they are not only “ the saddest 
words of tongue or pen,” but the most foolish and 
unprofitable! 

For, in the first place, no one can tell what the con¬ 
sequences would be in the long run if something varied 
from the actual course of affairs. The least alteration 
in certain particulars may involve far-reaching changes 
which none of us can foresee. Once start a train of 
consequences in human affairs and no one but the All- 
seeing can foretell the result. Why, even in a game of 
chess, the different moving of a single piece, though it 
were only a pawn, might so change the entire game that 
not even the most skilful player could foresee all of the 
consequences or tell what the ultimate outcome would 
be; and, if even a game of chess is so complicated a 
matter, the life of mankind, or of even one human be¬ 
ing, is incalculably more so. Every thing in human life 
is so related to other things that great and unexpected 
consequences are often brought about by seemingly 
trivial changes; and while we are apt to assume that it 
might be much better for us if certain matters had taken 


198 


IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 


a different turn, we ought also to consider that it might 
be much worse for us because of numberless contingen¬ 
cies which are not disclosed to our view. Many a tem¬ 
porary success has led to a final defeat, and many a 
temporary defeat has led to an ultimate victory. 

After the battle of Bull Run, in our civil war, it 
seemed for a while as if the cause of the Unionists 
had received an almost fatal blow, and as if the cause 
of the slaveholders had achieved a great victory. 
Thousands of Northern patriots were then saying to 
one another, O, if we had only won that battle, the 
war might have been ended inside of three months ; 
but who can now tell what the end is to be! It seemed 
as if a terrible mistake had been made, and as if a 
terrible misfortune had resulted therefrom. But the 
future proved that that defeat was the best thing that 
could have happened for the cause of the Unionists— 
not to bring the war to a speedy termination, but to 
get rid of the great evil which was causing the war: 
for if the rebellion had been speedily brought to an 
end, slavery would not have been brought to an end, 
but would have continued indefinitely with all of its 
attendant evils. The defeat at Bull Run was a blessing 
in disguise. And so with many another apparent mis¬ 
fortune. In many an instance, what now seems a 
misfortune will prove to have been providential, and 
the person who now laments it will have occasion to 
say, verily, God was in that place, and I knew it not. 

Instead of bemoaning our apparent mistakes and 
misfortunes, and imagining how much better some¬ 
thing else might have been, let us, then, consider how 
much worse it might have been for us, and that per¬ 
haps, on the whole, we are really much more fortunate 
than we should otherwise be. 


IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 


199 


Among the many retrospections which are likely to 
cause useless and unwise repinings are those which are 
caused by the death of our loved ones, especially if they 
are taken away in childhood or in early manhood or 
womanhood. For, hard though it is for us to be de¬ 
prived of their companionship, what certainty have we 
that their departure is not better for them than a longer 
existence in this world would have been ? Who knows 
that, if their lives had been prolonged in this world, 
they would have fulfilled our high hopes and expecta¬ 
tions concerning them? Better, far better apparently, 
if some persons had not lived as long as they have; 
better if they had died in infancy, or in early manhood 
or womanhood, than to have lived to become the human 
wrecks that they are. Those who die in early life 
escape at least from that great danger— 

" Gone, we know not from what suffering ,— 

Fled, we know not from what sin ,— 

They at least are safe from falling 
On the battle field of life, 

Overcome, as thousands have been, 

By temptation, care, and strife ”— 

And, after they have gone away, we have only precious 
memories of them, with a blessed assurance of meeting 
them again in a better world beyond the grave. 

When Arthur Hallam died, in the flower of his ex¬ 
ceptionally brilliant young manhood, Alfred Tennyson 
was heart-broken; for Hallam was his dearest friend. 
For years he did not cease to mourn for him, longing 
“ for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of 
a voice that was still.” To him it seemed a strange 
and almost cruel thing that a life so beautiful and 
promising should have been taken away. But, little by 


200 


IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 


little, his grief was transmuted into an inspiring mem¬ 
ory, as a result of which he wrote the poem “ In 
Memoriam,” which has comforted and uplifted many 
thousands of souls, and by means of which not only 
he, but Hallam also, “ being dead, yet speaketh.” Who 
knows but by his early death Hallam did more for the 
cause of humanity than if his life had been prolonged 
on this side of the grave? 

Let us never give way, in any case, to vain regrets 
and useless longings, but always endeavour to make 
the best of our present opportunities. 

And, even if we have sinned and are suffering for 
it, let us not despair, but repent and reform. Instead 
of worrying about either the past or the future, let us 
“ let the dead past bury its dead,” and 

“Act, act in the living Present, 

Heart within and God overhead! ” 

Ah, yes, God o’erhead,—that is why we need not 
worry, no matter by what uncertainties our life is sur¬ 
rounded. That is a sublime certainty to which, we can 
turn with assurance. From the jurisdiction of Festus, 
Paul appealed unto Csesar; and from the jurisdiction 
of Csesar, he appealed unto God. That final appeal is 
always open to all of us. In all of our perplexities and 
troubles and dangers we can appeal to the King of 
Kings for assistance and guidance, and He will not 
refuse to give it to us; for He is not only our King 
but our heavenly Father, always lovingly watching 
over us and providing better things for us than we 
could provide for ourselves. He knows our imper¬ 
fection, and how to develop us; our sinfulness, and 
how to save us. Our wisdom, then, is to trust in Him 


IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 


201 


from day to day, doing the best that we know how for 
ourselves and for others, and leaving Him to determine 

what the issue shall be. 

\ 

" His wisdom ever waketh, 

His sight is never dim; 

He knows the way He taketh, 

And l will walk with Him’* 


XXII 

A PRECIOUS SECRET 


“ The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and 
He will show them His covenant — Psa. 25 : 14 . 

I N ancient times, many people believed in the po¬ 
tency of talismans. A ring, or a precious stone, 
or something else which he carried, was supposed 
to endow a person with secret knowledge and ability, 
and to protect him from danger as he went on his way. 
Whoever had such an article was considered very 
fortunate, inasmuch as good ones were supposed to be 
hard to obtain. 

Of course, the belief was a superstition. A talisman 
had no actual efficacy; but it may symbolize the im¬ 
portant fact that some people have a kind of knowledge 
which gives them a great advantage in the conduct of 
life. It is not necessary for a person to have a magical 
ring, or a curious stone, or anything else of that nature, 
in order to possess knowledge which is serviceable to 
him and which has not been revealed to the rest of 
mankind. With reference to certain matters, some 
persons really have a sort of talismanic knowledge, 
their possession of which is unknown to the world ex¬ 
cepting in so far as they choose to reveal it. 

One person, for example, has such knowledge with 
reference to business affairs. He understands the 
secrets of trade and finance; he has private information 
in regard to the value of certain materials or certain 
changes which are soon to occur in the stock market. 

202 


A PRECIOUS SECRET 


203 


And what power it gives to him! What ability to 
meet and overcome his competitors! What command 
of the situation! What wealth, if he chooses! As he 
passes along the busy street with a multitude of other 
people, no one can see any signs of his special ability. 
In his outward appearance, there is nothing to dis¬ 
tinguish him in that respect from the rest of the throng. 
But when he engages in business, his power appears. 
Then the advantage of the secret knowledge which he 
possesses is manifest. 

Another is the possessor of political secrets. He 
understands the inside workings of political machinery. 
He knows what pieces are to be moved on the political 
chess-board, and what the effect of the changes will be. 
And because of that knowledge, he has extraordinary 
power in the political world. Nothing disconcerts him 
or permanently defeats him. If he fails to win in one 
way, he wins in some other way. He succeeds as a 
politician, let things turn as they may. 

Another has acquired a special knowledge of Na¬ 
ture ; and where his neighbours see and hear nothing 
else but the commonplace, he sees and hears the hidden 
meanings of the common sights and sounds around 
him. To him, every stone tells a wonderful story, 
and all of the various objects of Nature have messages 
which, are unknown to the great mass of mankind. 
He has the scientist’s knowledge; and no talisman was 
ever thought to accomplish such miracles as he ac¬ 
complishes with the agencies which he knows how to 
control. 

The knowledge of certain secrets, then, is advan¬ 
tageous to those who have it. It gives them resources 
which other people have not. Not every one can have 
such knowledge, no matter how earnestly he may desire 


204 ? 


A PRECIOUS SECRET 


it and strive for it. Only a few persons comparatively 
ever succeed in obtaining it. 

But, fortunately for all of us, there is a much more 
important kind of knowledge, which, although it is 
now possessed by only a minority of mankind, can be 
easily obtained by any one who earnestly seeks for it. 
It is that to which my text refers. 

“ The secret of the Lord is with them that fear 
Him, and He will show them His covenant.” Instead 
of the word “ secret,” the words “ counsel ” and 
“ friendship ” are given in the margin of the Revised 
Version as alternative renderings; and the statement 
apparently means that to those who fear Him God 
makes a special revelation, giving them an inward as¬ 
surance of His love and protection and of their ulti¬ 
mate salvation and everlasting blessedness. He gives 
them a realizing consciousness of His affectionate care 
for them. He teaches them that their afflictions are 
meant for their benefit, and that all of their experi¬ 
ences, however mysterious, are working together for 
their ultimate good. He assures them of a future life, 
and enables them to look forward to the coming of a 
time when sin and sorrow shall be no more. That is 
the precious secret which He imparts to their souls—a 
secret consciousness of His loving care for them and 
purpose concerning them. 

It is a secret in the sense of being imparted only to 
those who are prepared to receive it, and of being 
something which they cherish in the depths of their 
souls. 

In the outward appearance of a person who possesses 
that knowledge there may be nothing whatever to indi¬ 
cate his possession of it—although, in the long run, his 
acquaintances will see in him an extraordinary cheer- 


A PRECIOUS SECRET 


205 


fulness and an exceptional degree of hopefulness and 
courage and persistency. Those qualities will to some 
extent show in his conduct, but the cause of them will 
not be known excepting by those persons who possess 
the same secret. Other people may hear of it, but they 
cannot understand it. He may tell them about it, but 
the words which he uses will not have the same mean¬ 
ing to them as to him. Words are not the same as 
truth. Thousands of people are quite familiar with the 
words of the gospel and sadly ignorant of the truth of 
it. They do not treasure its heavenly meaning in the 
depths of their souls. Its blessedness is hidden from 
them. It is nothing to them but words, words, words. 
When they hear of the love of God, and the providence 
of God, and the covenant of God, it is a mystery to 
them. The reality to which such expressions refer is a 
secret which has not been revealed to their souls. 

But to those who have learned it, oh, what comfort 
it gives, what power and protection, as they journey 
through life—power to overcome temptation, power to 
endure hardships and trials and sorrows, power to per¬ 
severe in the face of all obstacles, power to be patient 
and hopeful and cheerful under the most afflictive for¬ 
tune, and not only to meet death without fear when it 
comes, but even to welcome it as a means to a more 
glorious life! 

Enoch knew that precious secret; and it enabled him, 
after walking with God all the days of his life, to pass 
on from this world to the next one so easily that what 
others called death was to him but transition. Abra¬ 
ham had learned it; and it sustained him through all 
the long years of his wanderings, and finally enabled 
him to meet death with an unwavering confidence that 
in his seed should all families of the earth have a bless- 



206 


A PRECIOUS SECRET 


ing. Moses was aware of it; and it supported him 
through all of the trials of the wilderness, when he 
would otherwise have fainted or given up in despair. 
Elisha was acquainted with it; and it enabled him, 
when surrounded by his enemies at Dothan, to per¬ 
ceive that a heavenly army was arrayed on his side. 
David had received it; and it enabled him, in his 
troubles, to compose the twenty-third psalm. The 
apostle Paul was familiar with it; and therefore he 
could be content in whatsoever state he was, and could 
truthfully say that for him to live was Christ and to 
die was gain. 

Thousands of other persons have known the same 
secret. Thousands know it today; and to all who have 
learned it, it gives the same advantage over those who 
have not. It enables them to see the true meaning of 
life. It gives them a clue to its mysteries. Where 
others see only the hard lines of necessity, they can 
read between the lines a message of comfort and hope 
and good will. Where others can see only the dusty 
highway of life, they get continual glimpses of the 
delectable mountains and know that the way which is 
marked out for them, however difficult to follow, is the 
way which God has ordained for them, and that it 
leads to the gates of the heavenly city, where earthly 
troubles shall be no more. Nothing can dishearten 
them, because they know that God loves them and is 
constantly watching over them, and that, in His own 
good time and His own good way, He will prove to 
them that their trials have been good for their souls. 

In their lives there are many things which they can¬ 
not understand—many experiences which trouble them, 
many mysteries which excite their cogitation and won¬ 
derment. Their faith is often tried by such things; 


A PRECIOUS SECRET 


207 


but it never fails them, because the secret of the Lord 
is with them, and their knowledge of His covenant 
makes them confident and victorious. Like Elisha at 
Dothan, when beleaguered by difficulties, they have 
help from on high. As Whittier says, 

“ There are who, like the seer of old, 

Can see the helpers God has sent. 

And how life’s rugged mountain side 
Is white with many an angel tent. 

“ They hear the heralds whom the Lord 
Sends down His pathway to prepare. 

And light, from others hidden, shines 
On their high place of praise and prayer . 

“Let such, for earth’s despairing ones, 

Hopeless, yet longing to he free, 

Breathe once again the prophet’s prayer, 

‘ Lord, ope their eyes, that they may see.’ ” 

Oh, that they might see! For how pitiable is the con¬ 
dition of those who do not! In times of piosperity 
they may seem quite contented, but when trouble arises 
they are despondent and helpless. And, no matter how 
prosperous their outward fortunes may be, or what 
resources of worldly wisdom and learning they have, 
life cannot be otherwise than a meaningless thing to 
them, compared with what it would be if they under¬ 
stood its significance and could interpret its events in 
the light of God’s covenant. Without a consciousness 
of His love and His superintending providence, no one 
can go through life with the same serenity of spirit 
and the same mastery of events as if he possessed such 
a consciousness. It is as impossible as for a bird, to 
fly if deprived of its wings. Such a person has nothing 


208 


A PRECIOUS SECRET 


to uplift and sustain him. But he who possesses the 
secret of the Lord can always mount up with wings 
as an eagle; he can renew his strength; he can run and 
not be weary; he can walk and not faint. 

Observe now to whom it is said that this secret is 
given. It is given only to those who conform to the 
requirement which is set forth in my text—a require¬ 
ment which is inherent in the very nature of the case; 
for whoever would have any kind of knowledge must 
obey the conditions on which its possession depends. 

For instance, whoever would have an intimate knowl¬ 
edge of Nature must obey the conditions which Nature 
imposes. If he would enter into its secrets, he must 
conform to its laws. He must come to it in a spirit of 
humility and discipleship. Nature tells nothing to self- 
pinionated people who endeavour to make it sustain 
their own theories. It conceals its secrets from all such 
people, and tells them only to those who patiently obey 
its directions. The true scientist must be an obedient 
man, subordinating his own theories and wishes and 
intelligence to the unchangeable laws of the natural 
world. 

So of him who would learn the secrets of art, or of 
economics, or of anything else which requires an in¬ 
telligent use of its principles. There are certain inex¬ 
orable rules to be followed, and no one can obtain the 
knowledge if he disobeys or ignores them. 

Even so in regard to this best of all secrets. It is 
revealed only to those who fear the Lord. That is the 
uncompromising condition. But it is a condition with 
which all persons can comply if they will; because it 
requires us simply to reverence the Lord and obey Him 
—not to fear Him as an enemy, but only with that kind 
of fear with which a child should regard a loving 


A PRECIOUS SECRET 


209 


father who exercises a father’s rightful government 
over him. If any one fears the Lord in that way, the 
Lord will show him His covenant, giving him an as¬ 
surance of His love and protection and of the certainty 
that all will be well in the end. 

That is what the Saviour meant when He said, “If 
any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, 
whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself ”; 
and, again, “ I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven 
and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the 
wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes.” 
If only those who are wise and prudent from the 
world’s point of view were competent to discover the 
truth of the gospel, and to realize its saving power, 
the great majority of mankind would be debarred from 
the privilege; but, happily, that is not the case. All that 
is needed is a teachable spirit; a humble, obedient, child¬ 
like spirit; a spirit that says “ Lord, what wilt Thou 
have me to do? ” and then does it with faithfulness. 

Many people have no intimate knowledge of the 
gospel merely because they will not obey the condition 
of obtaining it. Some of them insist upon making 
their own conditions, like those Jews who demanded a 
sign from the Saviour—by which they meant such a 
sign as agreed with their politics—instead of accepting 
the actual signs which He gave to them. 

When Professor Gray, the distinguished botanist, 
who was an earnest believer in the Christian religion, 
asked Mr. Darwin, the renowned evolutionist, what 
possible proof would convince him that there is a design 
in creation, and an intelligent designer behind its phe¬ 
nomena, Mr. Darwin replied: “ Your question, ‘ What 
would convince me?’ is a poser. If I saw an angel 
come down to teach us so, and I was convinced, from 


210 


A PRECIOUS SECRET 


others seeing him, that I was not mad, I should be¬ 
lieve ”; and, again, “If man was made of brass and 
iron, and in no way connected with any other organism 
which had ever lived, I should perhaps be convinced.” 
Because no such sign was given to him he would not 
accept the numerous signs which are actually given to 
us, and consequently had no faith in a personal Provi¬ 
dence or in any life beyond the grave. He was un¬ 
fortunately one of a great number of people who would 
believe in the gospel, or who think that they would, if 
God would adopt their way instead of His own way. 
But that He will never do; and until they are willing 
to accept His way instead of their own way, He will 
not, for He cannot, impart His truth to their souls. 

Via lucis, via cruris —the way of light is the way of 
the cross—and the way to be spiritually enlightened 
regarding the great problems and trials of life is to 
humble one’s self, and take up the cross, and follow 
Him Who is “ the way and the truth and the life.” 

If, then, you would have the light of life and be wise 
unto salvation, accept Jesus Christ as your teacher and 
example. Then He will make His abode with you. He 
will tell you the secret of life and of death. He will 
give you to eat of the hidden manna. His peace and 
joy will fill your soul as the years go by; and, finally, 

“ the end shall tell 

The dear Lord doeth all things well.” 


XXIII 

THE PARABLE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE 

“ When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he zvalketh 
through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he 
saith, I will return to my house from whence I came out; and 
when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. 
Then he goeth and taketh with him seven other spirits more 
wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there; and 
the last state of that man is worse than the first .”— Matt. 
12 : 43 - 45 - 

T HIS is evidently a parable, a story which Jesus 
told to illustrate a truth. The story itself is 
fictitious, like that of the Rich Man and Laza¬ 
rus ; and it was founded, like that story, on a popular 
superstition which the Jewish people had adopted from 
the nations that surrounded them. It was believed that 
after the death of their physical bodies the spirits of 
certain wicked persons entered into the bodies of other 
persons and made a great deal of trouble for them. 
Such spirits were called demons, and certain diseases 
were commonly attributed to their influence. Insanity 
and epilepsy are the modern names of those diseases. 
Jesus cured many people who had those diseases, and 
His enemies said that He did it with the help of 
Beelzebub, whom they supposed to be the prince of 
demons. They accused Him of being in league with 
the devil, notwithstanding the absurdity, which He 
pointedly showed to them, of supposing that the devil, 
if there were such a being, would oppose his own ac¬ 
complices and turn them out of their homes. 

211 


212 THE PARABLE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE 


When, therefore, they demanded that He should 
show them a sign from heaven to prove His Messiah- 
ship, He told them that, owing to their state of mind, 
it would be of no use to them; inasmuch as their un¬ 
belief, if driven away temporarily, would soon return 
and be greater and worse than before, like a demon, 
with reinforcements, returning to the body of a person 
from whom it had once been expelled. He implied by 
the parable that, even if He should comply with their 
unbelieving demand, and so compel them temporarily to 
cease from denying Him, they would not really believe 
in Him, but would be merely vacant-minded for a 
while in regard to Him, and would then find some 
excuse for increasing their enmity and their demoniac 
determination to put Him to death. 

Such was the meaning of the parable, so far as the 
Jews were concerned; and we know how it was cor¬ 
roborated by the course of events. For a little while, 
because of His miracles, a great many of them fol¬ 
lowed Him and professed to believe in Him, but, 
having no real affection for Him, and no genuine de¬ 
votion to the principles of His Kingdom, they soon 
forsook Him, and cried out, “ Crucify him! Away 
with this man! ” 

And if this story of a wicked spirit returning with 
reinforcements to its former habitation had a special 
application to the case of the Jews, it is no less ap¬ 
plicable to many a person who is living today. Prop¬ 
erly taken, it conveys a truth of great importance to 
every one—namely, that the only way of getting per¬ 
manently rid of an evil spirit is by permanently filling 
its place with a good one. 

It is not necessary to accept the ancient theory about 
demons in order to see that many people are inhabited 


THE PARABLE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE 213 


by evil spirits—that is, by evil thoughts and feelings, 
evil wishes, dispositions, ambitions, and impulses. 

Every person is not only a spiritual being, but he 
has a spirit of some sort which is distinct from him¬ 
self—an attribute, a quality, a characteristic—which to 
some extent determines his life and his influence. We 
are told that the King of Babylon preferred Daniel 
above his companions because “ an excellent spirit was 
in him ”; and Paul said that he was thankful that God 
had given to him “ not the spirit of fear, but the spirit 
of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” There 
are good spirits and bad spirits^—spirits of “ love, joy, 
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, temperance, 
faith ”; and, on the other hand, spirits of hatred, and 
envy, and arrogance, and cowardice, and meanness, 
and intemperance, and infidelity, and misery. 

And, oh, what slaves some people are to the evil 
spirits that have possession of them! There are no 
other such pitiable people in the world as the victims of 
their own evil dispositions and propensities; and the 
greatest need of mankind is complete deliverance from 
the indwelling of such malevolent spirits. That is the 
kind of salvation which all people have need of. And 
the only way to accomplish it is by filling the places of 
such injurious spirits with the good spirits which, as 
a matter of course, are opposed to them. 

Nature, we are told, abhors a vacuum; and that is 
as true in regard to spiritual as to material things. If 
we merely try to empty ourselves of all badness, with¬ 
out filling ourselves with goodness, we shall certainly 
fail. We cannot maintain such a vacuum. The evil 
that is in us, if cast out temporarily, will come back 
and resume its sway and be worse than before. 

That is one of the reasons why so many attempts at 


214 THE PARABLE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE 


reform end in failure, not only with individuals but on 
the part of communities; for example, in dealing with 
the criminal classes, and in trying to get rid of political 
corruption. 

When a person commits a crime, society arrests and 
imprisons him, and so prevents him from committing 
any further offences for a few months or a term of 
years, according to what he has done. And when he 
comes out of prison, having received there no positive 
instruction in righteousness, no inculcation of moral 
impulses, his old companions get hold of him, his old 
habits return to him, and he is worse than before. 

Every now and then, the officers of the law, or of 
some organization for reforming society, make a forc¬ 
ible raid upon houses of prostitution or gambling es^ 
tablishments, and some good people are jubilant; but in 
a few weeks all of those places are open again, or a lot 
of others which are under a similar management, and 
the demoralizing business goes on as before. 

And so, every now and then, we have a spasm of 
political reformation and house-cleaning. For a little 
while there is great excitement in getting rid of a gang 
of plunderers who have been using the public offices 
as a means of robbing the community. But, having 
seemingly accomplished it, the community relaxes its 
vigilance and takes no positive measures to keep good 
men in office; and, almost before we are aware of it, 
back comes the old gang, and the old conditions are 
intensified, and it will be harder to get rid of them the 
next time than before. 

In all such cases the failure is due to the fact that 
the reformers stop at just the point where they ought 
to go on, assuming that they have made an ending 
when they have only made a beginning, and depending 


THE PARABLE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE 215 

only on restrictive methods for the accomplishment of 
what they desire to do, ignoring the truth to which my 
text calls attention. Which is as if a farmer should 
try to get rid of the weeds with which a field is over¬ 
run, by merely taking a scythe and cutting them down. 
Suppose that he cuts down every one of them, and then 
gathers them up and burns them, and then gives* the 
field a thorough ploughing, upturning every inch of sod 
and laying it bare to the open air, and then wipes his 
brow and says to* himself, “ Well, I guess that that 
field won’t bear any more weeds.” What will be the 
result, if he does nothing more? How long will he 
enjoy his apparent victory? Even while he is rejoicing 
in what he has done, the germs of a million little weed 
seeds which have been hidden in the ground, and which 
have hitherto had no chance to grow, are congratulat¬ 
ing themselves on their magnificent opportunity. The 
air, too, contains multitudes of wind-wafted seeds, fly¬ 
ing hither and thither in search of a home, and as they 
come to that empty, inviting field, down they come and 
begin to grow. Besides which, the roots of many of 
the old weeds still retain their vitality. And so, some 
fine morning, the farmer discovers that, instead of 
having got entirely rid of the weeds, he has raised a 
larger crop and sturdier. 

What should he have done to insure a victory? 
Why, in place of the weeds which he cut down, he 
should have planted something else, of a different char¬ 
acter— corri) or wheat, or beans, or potatoes, or any of 
a hundred other things that are useful to humanity. 
The ground would then have been safeguarded against 
a return to its former condition; and, if any weeds be¬ 
gan to grow, he could very easily have prevented them. 

Human nature is like a field. The Bible calls it 


216 THE PARABLE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE 


“ God’s husbandry.” And if we would get rid of the 
evil things that grow there, we must not only try to 
drive them out, but must be careful to fill their places 
with the good and the true. In short, we must over¬ 
come evil with good. 

Even in regard to our physical condition, this prin¬ 
ciple holds. To banish sickness, and keep it banished, 
we must do something besides taking medicine. Medi¬ 
cine has its uses. It is sometimes like a scythe with 
which to cut down the weeds. But medicine alone will 
not make a man healthy. In order to be healthy we 
must keep- our bodies supplied with good food and 
good drink and good air and good clothing, and take a 
proper amount of the right kind of exercise. We may 
temporarily get rid of the symptoms of sickness by 
driving them away with sedatives, but we cannot medi¬ 
cate ourselves into a state of good health. Our main 
dependance must always be on hygienic regulations, to 
which medicine at its best is no more than a helper. 

And SO' with mental diseases. They can be perma¬ 
nently cured only in accordance with this principle. 

Suppose that a person is troubled with chronic 
despondency, or with what some people call “ the 
blues.” He can drive it away for an hour or two by 
taking a drink of intoxicating liquor, or by going to 
some place of excitement or gaiety, as multitudes of 
people actually do in such cases. But in the end that 
makes the trouble a great deal worse than before. The 
evil spirit, thus driven away, returns with reinforce¬ 
ments when the excitement is over, and tortures its 
victim with greater misery, and perhaps drives him to 
suicide. No help that way lies. The only real remedy 
for such a disease is to fill the mind with wholesome 
thoughts. Sometimes a person gets the blues because 


THE PARABLE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE 217 


he has nothing else to do. He suffers from the melan¬ 
cholia of continuous idleness. In that case, the best 
remedy is some useful employment to occupy his time 
and thoughts. Or if the despondency is owing to ex¬ 
cessive employment, then the remedy is rest, or a change 
of employment, to restore the mental elasticity which, 
has worn out underneath the continuous strain. 

Or suppose that a person is troubled with skepticism 
in regard to the great truths of the Christian religion. 
He doubts the Bible, he doubts the doctrine of immor¬ 
tality, perhaps he even doubts the existence of God— 
not because he wishes to doubt, but because he is so 
constituted that he cannot do otherwise, like Thomas 
in regard to his Lord’s resurrection. How shall he be 
cured of it? Shall we try tO' frighten the demon out 
of him? Shall we picture to such a skeptical person 
the horrors of a fiery hell, and tell him that unless he 
believes, in Christianity he will be sent to such a place 
and remain there forever? That is the course which 
some people pursue ; and no doubt many a person has 
been frightened in that way into thinking that he be¬ 
lieved in a devil, at any rate. But no genuine cure was 
ever accomplished in that way; and there is always 
danger that, when the excitement is over, the last state 
of that man will be worse than the first. 

The real cure for such a state of mind is that which 
was given by the Saviour Himself when He said to 
the unbelieving Jews, “ My doctrine is not mine, but 
His that sent me. If any man will do His will, he shall 
know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether 
I speak of myself.” Not all at once, but by sure de¬ 
grees, into any one who obeys that rule the spirit of 
an abiding faith will enter, and prevent any further 
doubt of the Christian religion. 


218 THE PARABLE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE 


That was the case with Professor Romanes, one of 
England’s most distinguished scientists. In his early 
life he published a book in which, on scientific grounds, 
he cast doubt on Christianity and on the existence of 
God. But, later in life, he published another book, full 
of profound faith in the teachings of Christ, and con¬ 
taining this statement as to the change in his views: 
“ It does not appear that the modifications which my 
views have undergone are due so much to purely 
logical processes of the intellect as to the subcon¬ 
scious influences due to the ripening experiences of 
life.” In honestly seeking for truth and righteous¬ 
ness, according to the light which he had, he grad¬ 
ually came to believe in Christianity. While he was 
doing what Christianity tells us to do, his doubts in 
regard to it vanished away, as darkness departs from 
a room when the windows are opened and the sunlight 
comes in. 

And, finally, the same principle applies to the cure 
of sin. The only way to expel it and to keep it from 
returning is by introducing the spirit of positive 
righteousness, which is the spirit of love to both God 
and mankind. No one can become sinless by merely 
resolving to be so, or by merely endeavouring not to 
commit any sins; for no matter how earnestly he may 
try not to transgress the prohibitory commandments, 
the old Adam in his nature will repeatedly assert itself 
unless it is superseded by “ the new man which after 
God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” 
Said the great apostle of the Gentiles, “ The law of the 
spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from 
the law of sin and death,” and that must be the experi¬ 
ence of every person who is really redeemed from the 
dominion of sin. When the holy spirit of love comes 


THE PARABLE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE 219 


in, the evil spirit of sin necessarily vanishes, for the 
two cannot exist together. 

Never content yourself, then, with merely negative 
measures, or with any merely half-way measures, in 
trying to banish the spirit of evil from yourself or 
from others. Make no terms with it, no concessions 
to it, no compromise with it, but persevere in opposing 
it till you have completely and forever overcome it 
with good. 


XXIV 

AS A FOOL DIETH 


“ Should Abner die as a fool dieth? ”—II Sam. 3: 33 [R. V.]. 

A BNER was a cousin of King Saul and the cap¬ 
tain of his army. After the death of Saul, he 
held the same position in the army of Ish- 
bosheth, against whom the tribe of Judah protested 
and revolted, setting up a separate kingdom and choos¬ 
ing David as its king. Warfare then followed between 
the two kingdoms, and continued for about two^ years, 
till, under a feeling of discouragement and of resent¬ 
ment towards Ishbosheth, Abner decided to transfer 
his allegiance to David, and went to Hebron for that 
purpose with a retinue of twenty men. There he en¬ 
tered into a covenant with David, agreeing to exert his 
influence to bring all of the twelve tribes under David’s 
control. 

But when Joab, the captain of David’s army, was 
informed of the covenant, he was highly indignant, 
professing to think that Abner was not to be trusted. 
In reality, however, he was jealous of Abner, and was 
fearful of being supplanted by him as the captain of 
King David’s army. So, under a pretence of desiring 
to talk with him, he quietly drew Abner aside from his 
retinue, and then murdered him by surreptitiously 
thrusting a dagger into his side. 

Thus perished a man of exceptional ability ; and 
David very bitterly lamented his death—not only be¬ 
cause it ended the life of a person from whom he had 

220 


AS A FOOL DIETH 


221 


fondly hoped to receive great assistance, but because it 
took place in a manner so shameful, so unworthy both 
of the murderer and of him who was slain. He felt 
that a person of Abner’s excellent reputation ought not 
to have died so ignominious a death, and that he ought 
not to have been so foolish as to put himself unguard¬ 
edly within the reach of his enemy. He felt that such 
a man should have died, if at all, in a glorious manner, 
bravely using his faculties, instead of being entrapped 
and unresistingly slaughtered by the craftiness of his 
foe. That was what excited his sorrowful indignation 
and drew forth the lamentation of which my text is a 
portion: 

“Should Abner die as a fool dieth? 

Thy hands were not bound, nor thy feet put into fetters; 

As a man falleth before the children of iniquity, so didst 
thou fallT 

It was the lament of a man who was himself a true 
soldier over the unsoldierly death of another one, and 
also of a man of noble impulses over the ignoble end¬ 
ing of a life of noble possibilities. 

It is an occasion for lamentation when any person 
dies in a discreditable manner, or under circumstances 
which imply any foolishness on his part. Substitute 
for the name of Abner the name of any other person, 
and the question is equally pertinent. Should he die 
as a fool dieth? 

No one needs to die in that way, unless he is a 
natural fool, made so by forces beyond his control. 
Some persons are naturally so deficient in intelligence 
as not to be able to safeguard themselves. They live 
foolishly, and are likely to die foolishly, through no 
fault of their own. Figuratively speaking, their hands 


222 


AS A FOOL DIETH 


are bound and their feet are in fetters as long as they 
live in this world. But that is not the case with the 
majority of mankind. Most persons are so well en¬ 
dowed that they can both live and die in such a manner 
as to deserve and receive the approval of their acquaint¬ 
ances. They have such physical and intellectual and 
spiritual faculties that, if they will only make a proper 
use of them, they can both live and die in such a man¬ 
ner as will redound to their credit, and not to their 
shame. Otherwise, they are chargeable with blame¬ 
worthy foolishness, like that of Abner in not guarding 
against Joab’s hostility. And, if it was deplorable for 
him to die in that way, instead of dying like a hero, 
how deplorable it is for any person to die without 
having made the best use of his powers as long as his 
earthly life continued! How sad to die with wasted 
powers and opportunities thrown away! 

Among the people who die thus foolishly there are 
many whose folly consists primarily in ignoring the 
fact that they are liable to die, and that they should 
guard against the dangers which are lying in wait 
for them. 

Abner should have been on his guard against Joab. 
He should have bethought himself that Joab was a 
treacherous man with a personal interest in getting 
him out of the way. Had he borne that obvious fact 
in mind and taken proper precautions with reference 
to it, he might have lived a good deal longer and have 
died a noble death at last. By disregarding the danger 
he unfitted himself to cope with it, and therefore died 
as a fool dieth. And yet the danger to which he thus 
foolishly exposed himself was no greater than that to 
which thousands*of persons are constantly and thought¬ 
lessly exposing themselves. Living in a world where 


AS A FOOL DIETH 


223 


the conditions of health are inexorable, and where 
graveyards are being filled with the bodies of people 
who disregard those conditions, they act as if they 
thought that they themselves had immunity, and as if, 
to use the words of Shakespeare, “ the flesh that walls- 
about their life were brass impregnable.” What folly 
for a person to act in that way, ignoring his mortality 
and his liability to the various causes of death, taking 
no precautions with reference to it and making no 
preparation to meet it meritoriously when it finally 
comes, as it certainly will! 

What should we think of a person who went care¬ 
lessly on from day to day, buying goods and contract¬ 
ing debts, without making any reckoning of the liabil¬ 
ity incurred by it or any arrangements to meet the 
demands of his creditors? Unfortunately, there are 
such people, but they are not regarded as wise. We 
call them either knaves or fools. And yet every one 
of us, sooner or later, must pay the unavoidable debt 
of nature which requires that the body shall return to 
the dust while the spirit returns to Him Who gave it; 
and if we are to pay that debt as it should be paid, so 
as to have an honourable discharge from this world, 
we must make some preparation for it. Die we must; 
but, having intellectual and spiritual faculties, let us 
not neglect to take proper precautions, so as to die in 
such a manner as will be no reproach to us. To take 
no such precautions is to die as a fool dieth. 

And if it is foolish to ignore our liability to die, and 
therefore to take no precautions concerning it, how 
much more so to invite an untimely demise by any sort 
of reckless conduct! To imperil one’s life in the per¬ 
formance of a duty is neither foolish nor reprehensible. 
It is highly honourable and praiseworthy. It is to risk 


224 


AS A FOOL DIETH 


one kind of life for the sake of a higher kind. But to 
risk one’s physical life in a mere spirit of recklessness, 
or for notoriety's sake, or for a financial consideration, 
or to escape from the troubles of the present state of 
existence, has no justification, and whoever dies in that 
way dies the death of a fool. 

No person has a right to destroy his own life, either 
directly or indirectly, unless he offers it as a sacrifice 
to the cause of God and humanity, in obedience to his 
conscience or to a call from some authority which is 
higher than he. To commit suicide is utterly wrong 
and unwarrantable. Life is a sacred trust bestowed 
by a loving Creator, to be used in a noble manner for 
praiseworthy ends till He Himself shall terminate it. 
To terminate it for ourselves, or to imperil it need¬ 
lessly, is as blameworthy as for a soldier to run away 
from his station; and he who meets his death in that 
way is chargeable with disgrace and foolishness. 

Alas, how many people there are who are guilty of 
that sort of foolishness! Not only is there a large 
number of deliberate suicides, but there is a vastly 
larger number of inconsiderate people who have habits 
that are certainly impairing their health and inviting 
the speedy arrival of death. 

Every now and then some foolhardy adventurer en¬ 
deavours to swim across the Niagara rapids, or jumps 
from one of the bridges which extend across the East 
River; and his action is reported at great length in the 
newspapers, with possibly some editorial comments on 
the foolishness of such performances. But it hardly 
attracts any public attention that thousands are con¬ 
stantly risking their lives in ways which are almost 
equally absurd and imprudent. It is so common a 
thing both for men and for women to leap into the 


AS A FOOL DIETH 


225 


turbulent current of what is known as fast living, the 
end of which is physical and spiritual death, that we 
witness it with scarcely a remark or an emotion. 

Many a young and promising man, as well equipped 
as Abner was with physical and mental and moral re¬ 
sources, makes that exceedingly foolish mistake. His 
hands are not bound nor his feet put in fetters by any 
one but himself. With a proper use of his faculties 
he might lead a noble, prosperous life, prolonging his 
days, and winning the approbation of his friends and 
acquaintances. He might become a leader among the 
forces of righteousness, a captain on the side of hu¬ 
manity’s welfare, or be, at least, a highly efficient and 
praiseworthy soldier. But, alas, he is betrayed by his 
carnal passions, or by the persuasions of his compan¬ 
ions, or by a spirit of self-will and overweening self- 
confidence, into ignoring the laws of physical and 
spiritual welfare; and the consequence is that, instead 
of living a long and useful and honourable life, he 
comes to an untimely and scandalous end. 

Oh, the pity and the shame of it, that so many of 
the most promising young men of the land should thus 
die as a fool dieth, instead of laudably filling out their 
days! Well may we lament for them, as David la¬ 
mented for Abner, or as Jeremiah lamented for the 
people of Israel when he saw that they were destroying 
themselves by their sins. “ Oh, that my head were 
waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears,” said he, 
“ that I might weep day and night for the slain of the 
daughter of my people! ” Alas, for the foolish victims 
of injurious habits and sinful propensities! Whoso is 
betrayed by such things is not wise. 

And alas for those people who, although they are 
doing nothing to shorten their lives, are doing nothing 


226 


AS A FOOL DIETIL 


to ennoble them, or to enrich themselves with that sort 
of treasure which alone will be of value to them when 
they come to the end of their earthly career! They also 
are in danger of dying as a fool dieth, because they are 
laying up for themselves no treasure in heaven, no 
spiritual riches of righteousness and peace and joy—as 
Jesus taught in His parable of a certain rich man who, 
having so many worldly goods that he intended to build 
more barns to hold them, suddenly heard the solemn 
message, “ Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be re¬ 
quired of thee: then whose shall those things be which 
thou hast provided? ” Ah, yes, “ so is he that layeth 
up treasure for himself, and is not rich towards God.” 
So is every one who is not careful to live so judiciously 
that when he enters the other world he will not find 
himself in a spiritually impoverished condition. 

What should we think of a person who, being about 
to set sail for a far-away country, should make no 
effort to provide himself with the things that he will 
need there, but should bring down to the wharf a 
whole cart-load of stuff which would not only be use¬ 
less in the place to which lie is going but which he 
would not even be permitted to take away from the 
shore? Should we call him a wise man? How much 
more SO' is he who comes down to* the grave with 
nothing else but a lot of worldly and temporal 
possessions ? 

There is a remarkable painting, by a Russian artist, 
representing a stormy scene on the shore of the Black 
Sea. Up from the midst of the dashing waves there 
rises a mountainous promontory, rocky, steep, and far- 
uplifted towards the cloudy, wind-swept sky. Close to 
the base of the promontory there emerges from the 
water a piece of timber, from which there has just 


AS A FOOL DIETH 


227 


escaped a man who is clinging with desperation to the 
face of the precipice, saved from the foaming sea, but 
bereft of his possessions, and having before him the 
painful task of climbing to the summit of the stupen¬ 
dous acclivity. 

Behold in that picture an allegory. Behold in that 
expanse of water the uncertain sea of our earthly life. 
And behold in that poor shipwrecked sailor the man 
who enters the other world without having any treas¬ 
ures which he can retain and make use of. Saved by 
the grace of God from being completely destroyed, he 
reaches the shore of the spirit world. But the heavenly 
life, how far above him! Spiritually poor and naked, 
he lies at the very foot of the mountain of holiness, 
whence he must climb as best he can to an experience 
of such blessedness as is possible for him. Of what 
use to him now are his former possessions—his carnal 
pleasures, his stocks and bonds, his political prefer¬ 
ments, or his power to command the obedience of men? 
Of what value are such things on the other side of the 
grave ? The only things of value to us when we enter 
the other world are the spiritual treasures stored away 
in our souls. If we have gathered spiritual wisdom 
and power and goodness, nobility of character, Christ- 
liness, godliness, then we shall not have lived in vain; 
and, no matter how or when death comes, we can meet 
it triumphantly. Otherwise, we cannot. 

The only way to die wisely is by living wisely before¬ 
hand ; and the only way of living wisely is by living a 
life of true religion, in love to God and love to man, 
using our God-given powers to the best of our ability, 
whether of body, of mind, or of soul. He who lives 
in that way need have no anxiety as to the termination 
of his earthly career. For when the time comes for 


228 


AS A FOOL DIETH 


him to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, 
he will be calm and triumphant and safe from all evil, 
and the grave will be 

“ but a covered bridge 

Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness ” 

\ 

God help us all to live and die “ not as fools, but as 
wise men, redeeming the time.” 


XXV 

OUR HEAVENLY HOME 

“Man goeth to his long 110016/' —Ecct. 12:5. 

T HERE are about fifteen hundred millions of 
people in the world, and, a hundred years from 
now, but very few of them will remain. Oc¬ 
casionally some man or woman lives for more than a 
hundred years, but the longest-lived soon disappear, 
going the way of the countless millions who have lived 
here since the world began. How many have ever 
lived here we have no means of knowing, for the most 
of them have left no trace behind. And so it will be 
with all future generations. Every day many thous¬ 
ands come into the world, and during the same brief 
period many thousands go out of it. 

“Like shadows gliding o'er the plain, 

Or clouds that move successive on, 

Man's busy generations pass, 

And while we gaze their forms are gone/' 

What becomes of them, after that? 

We commonly say that people die when they come 
to the end of their earthly career ; and we know what 
becomes of their physical forms. We know that their 
bodies decay and are resolved into dust. We know 
that the earth is a vast burial ground, carrying in its 
soil the disintegrated remains of whatever it gave in 
times gone by to the people whom it once sustained. 

229 


280 


OUR HEAVENLY HOME 


Dust they were in their origin, and unto dust they 
have returned, so far as their visible forms were 
concerned. 

But their bodies were not themselves, and to tell us 
what has become of those perishable organisms is like 
telling us what has become of their castaway clothing 
—only that, and nothing more. 

When the members of the Peary party, exploring 
the northern coast of Greenland, discovered the de¬ 
serted camp of the Greely party, and found there some 
clothing and a number of other things which indicated 
who had been there, the discovery gave them no in¬ 
formation whatever as to the whereabouts of the per¬ 
sons to whom those things had belonged. They were 
not able to determine by means of those relics whether 
any of the members of the earlier expedition had 
reached the North Pole, or what else had become of 
them. And so, when we visit any place which con¬ 
tains material remains or forsaken possessions of per¬ 
sons who formerly lived in this world, we can learn 
nothing therefrom as to what has become of the per¬ 
sons themselves. Their remains or memorials simply 
emphasize the question, Where did they themselves go 
when they parted with those things, and where are 
they at the present time ? 

That is a question of tremendous importance; 
and without the right answer to it we can never be 
satisfied. 

The Bible says that all such persons have gone to 
their eternal home, and it is eminently worth our while 
to consider what that statement means. 

It surely does not mean that they have gone out of 
existence. It means that somewhere they are still alive, 
and that the place where they are is a genuine home 


OUR HEAVENLY HOME 


231 


to them. That is evident from the natural meaning of 
the statement and also from that of its immediate con¬ 
text ; for the context says, “ Then shall the dust return 
to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto 
God who gave it.” The place to which every one goes 
when he departs from this world is a spiritual abiding 
place; it is somewhere in the spirit world, whose 
boundaries, if it has any, have not been revealed to us. 
Longfellow says of it, 

“ The spirit world around this world of sense 
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere 
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapors dense 
A vital breath of more ethereal air ”; 

and there are many things which tend to confirm the 
assertion. But, whether that be true or not, the spirit 
world, wherever it is, is the place to which people go 
when they depart from this world, and it will finally 
be the home of every one in the sweetest and most 
captivating sense of the word. 

For what is a home? What constitutes it? We use 
the word with various meanings. Sometimes we mean 
the house in which a person resides, or in which he 
habitually eats and sleeps, though it be only a boarding 
house. Sometimes we mean one’s native land, or the 
place where he spent his early years, even though he 
afterward moved far away from it. But behind all of 
the other meanings which we give to the word is that 
which it had in the mind of the wanderer who, far 
away from his native land, wrote the beautiful lines of 
“ Home, Sweet Home,” and also in the mind of him 
who wrote the affecting lines of “ The Old Folks at 
Home.” 

Home, in the primary sense of the word, the sweet- 


232 


OUR HEAVENLY HOME 


est and highest sense, is the abode of those who are 
most dear to us. It is the place where, under the 
paternal roof, parents and children, brothers and sis¬ 
ters, dwell together in affectionate relationship and 
companionship. That is home, wherever it is; and 
when any one is homesick, that is what he is longing 
for—not merely for any particular house or locality, 
but for the company of those who belong to his family. 
They make a home for him wherever they dwell; and, 
be it ever so humble, no other place is so dear to him 
in all the wide world. 

The world to which we shall go when we depart from 
the present one will be our home in that primary sense 
of the word—our final and everlasting home, in com¬ 
parison with which our earthly homes are only as a 
pilgrim’s tent which will be of no more service to him 
when he reaches his journey’s end. 

For, in the first place, when we enter that spirit world 
we shall find our heavenly Father there, and shall be 
spiritually much closer to Him than is possible for us 
on this side of the grave. When the material body 
returns to the dust, the spirit returns to God who gave 
it. He is “ the Father of spirits.” From Him our 
spirits emanated when we came to this world, and to 
Him they ascend when we are called tO' depart from it. 
Whether they ever consciously existed before coming 
here, no one can authoritatively affirm or deny. In his 
“ Ode on Immortality,” Wordsworth has said, 

“ Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; 

The soul that rises in us, our life’s star, 

Hath elsewhere had its setting, 

And cometh from afar.” 

But, so far as we know, Jesus never taught that 


OUR HEAVENLY HOME 


233 


doctrine. So far as the record shows, He said nothing 
about any previous existence of the souls of mankind. 
But, just before His crucifixion, He did say to His dis¬ 
ciples, “ I go unto the Father,” and, again, “ If ye 
loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto 
the Father.” 

There is a sense in which Jesus was always with the 
Father, and in which we ourselves can be with Him on 
this side of the grave. We can know Him here to some 
extent, and can hold very sweet communion with Him; 
but not as in the spirit world. Here we can only see 
Him as through a glass darkly and can have only an 
imperfect degree of communion with Him; but there 
we shall see Him much more clearly, and know Him 
much more intelligently, and commune with Him much 
more intimately. We shall be more conscious of His 
nearness, and of His fatherly love for us. Many 
things which are now mysterious in regard to Him 
will be plain to us. We shall see the true meaning of 
the way in which He has treated us, and shall be drawn 
to Him with a confidence beyond that which we ex¬ 
perience in the life that now is. 

While he was wandering in a far country, the 
prodigal knew that his father still remained in the old 
homestead; and that was why he returned to it. He 
was drawn to it by a consciousness of the relationship 
between them, and by a desire to have his father’s for¬ 
giveness and helpfulness. But when he had arrived, 
and was made to realize the full extent of his father’s 
great love for him, then, as never before, he was spir¬ 
itually drawn to him; and never before had his home 
meant so much to him. And similarly, when we enter 
the spirit world, a realizing sense of God’s nearness 
and love for us will make that world a blessed home 


234 


OUR HEAVENLY HOME 


to us. Sinners though we are, it will be home to us 
because our heavenly Father is there, and we shall 
realize His loving kindness as Jesus Christ has de¬ 
clared it to us. 

And to those who believe in Christ and love Him, 
His presence there will also make that world seem 
homelike. “ In my Father’s house are many man¬ 
sions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go 
to prepare a place for you; and if I go and prepare a 
place for you, I will come again and receive you unto 
myself, that where I am there ye may be also,” said 
He to His disciples; and, oh, how the prospect of 
meeting Him there must have illumined that world 
for them; and how homelike it must have seemed to 
them on account of that meeting, as one by one they 
entered there! 

The apostle Paul had never known Jesus Christ in 
the flesh, but so great was his love for Him that he 
wished to depart from this world in order to be in His 
company. “ We are confident,” said he, “ and willing 
rather to be absent from the body and to be present 
with the Lord ”; and, again, “ I am in a strait betwixt 
two, having a desire to depart and tO' be with Christ; 
which is far better: nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is 
more needful for you.” And so our Saviour’s presence 
there—the presence of Him Who so loved us that He 
laid down His life for us—will help to make the spirit 
world a home-like place for each and all of us. 

And, oh, how many dearly loved ones are now 
awaiting us there? Not only is our heavenly Father 
there, and He Who suffered on the cross for us, but a 
multitude of friends and relatives who have departed 
from this earthly shore. Parents, and children, and 
brothers, and sisters, and many other loved ones have 


OUR HEAVENLY HOME 


235 


gone on before us; and where they are will be home 
to us. There we shall find every one of them ; and 
there we shall love them, and be loved by them, more 
than ever before. They will not have forgotten us, nor 
shall we fail to remember them, nor will the former 
bonds of affection be weakened in any way. Nay, 

“He who plants within our hearts 
All this deep affection, 

Giving, when the form departs, 

Fadeless recollection, 

Will but clasp the unbroken chain 
Closer when we meet again.” 

And after we ourselves shall have entered there, all 
whom we leave behind will eventually follow us, to 
enlarge the home circle and to increase the home feel¬ 
ing as the years pass away. And there at last we shall 
fully realize that all mankind are related to us as chil¬ 
dren of the self-same Father, members of the same 
great family, towards each and every one of whom we 
shall have a correspondingly affectionate feeling. All 
worldly distinctions will have been buried in the grave, 
and every human soul will be joyfully recognized as a 
member of the same great spiritual and heavenly fam¬ 
ily, equally at home in the wonderful dwelling place to 
which the grave is but a doorway so far as the soul is 
concerned. 

And there at last all alike will be holy and happy. 
The ills that human flesh is heir to cannot enter the 
spirit world. No physical sickness or pain or decrepi¬ 
tude can there trouble or threaten us. No carnal 
temptations, no lust for material possessions or pleas¬ 
ures, can there lead us to disobey the commandments 
of God. But repentance for former transgressions can 


236 


OUR HEAVENLY HOME 


enter there; and resolutions for a more spiritual life 
can be formed there; and an abundance of spiritual 
help can be found there; and the best employment of 
those who have made the most progress will surely be 
to help those who are most deeply in need of it. The 
spiritually strong will bear the burdens of the spirit¬ 
ually weak. Guardian angels will care for undeveloped 
souls. And God and Christ will ceaselessly carry on 
Their ministry till all souls shall be perfect, as their 
heavenly Father is perfect. 

Oh, blessed assurance that such a home is awaiting 
us! Let us look joyfully forward to it, and not live as 
if this world were all. Let us consider this world as 
our field of labour, from which we shall soon go to our 
spiritual home as toilers go to their earthly homes at 
the close of the day. Or let us consider it as a place 
of education, from which we shall soon go to our 
spiritual home as children go home when they are 
dismissed by their school-teacher; or as a battlefield in 
which we are fighting in the cause of humanity, from 
which we shall soon go to our spiritual home as faith¬ 
ful soldiers go home when their enlistment is ended. 
And, so regarding it, let us set not our hearts on ma¬ 
terial things; nor give way to despondency because of 
the trials which come to us; nor mourn without hope 
when death enters our households and takes those who 
are dear to us; nor fear to encounter it when we are 
summoned to follow them; but press steadily onward 
to our heavenly home, and so live that when we enter 
there we may look back on an earthly life well spent, 
and be greeted not only with love but with approbation 
by the glorified ones who are awaiting us there. 


Printed in United States of America 


EVANGELISTIC WORK 


OZORA H. DAVIS , D.D. 

President Chicago Theological Seminary, 

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